Against Marcion

Whatever we have done against Marcion in the past, let it now be as it may. We are undertaking a new work out of an old one. My first little work, being somewhat hurried, I had afterwards withdrawn in favour of a fuller composition. This one too, before it had been furnished with copies, I lost through the fraud of a man who was then a brother and afterwards an apostate, who happened to have copied out certain parts most inaccurately and displayed them to the public. The need to correct it made a new version necessary, and the occasion persuaded me to add something. So this written work, the third after the second and now, from the third, the first, must of necessity explain at the outset how its work turned out, so that no one may be confused on finding its different versions scattered about.

Pontus, then, which is called Euxine (“hospitable”), is belied by its nature and mocked by its name. You should not judge Pontus hospitable from its situation either: it has withdrawn from our more civilized seas as though ashamed of its own barbarism. Most savage tribes inhabit it — if indeed one can be said to inhabit a wagon. Their dwelling is uncertain, their life raw, their lust promiscuous and for the most part naked; even when they hide it, they mark it by hanging their quivers from the yoke as a sign, so that no one may intrude. So they do not blush even at their own weapons. The corpses of their parents they cut up together with cattle and devour at a banquet. Those who have died in such a way that they are not fit for eating — theirs is an accursed death. Nor are the women softened toward modesty by their sex: they cut off their breasts, do their spinning with axes, and prefer soldiering to marrying. There is harshness from the sky as well. The day is never clear, the sun never smiles; the only air is fog; the whole year is winter; every wind that blows is the north wind. Liquids turn back into snow, rivers are denied by ice, mountains are heaped high with frost. Everything is numb, everything is stiff; nothing is warm there but savagery — that savagery, of course, which has given the stage its tales of the sacrifices of the Tauri, the loves of the Colchians, and the crosses of the Caucasus.

But nothing in Pontus is so barbarous and grim as the fact that Marcion was born there: more loathsome than a Scythian, more unsettled than a wagon-dweller, more inhuman than a Massagete, more audacious than an Amazon, darker than its cloud, colder than its winter, more brittle than its ice, more treacherous than the Danube, more precipitous than the Caucasus. And why not? At his hands the true Prometheus, God Almighty, is torn apart by blasphemies. Marcion is more savage even than the beasts of that barbarous land. For what beaver was ever such a castrator of the flesh as the man who abolished marriage? What Pontic mouse ever so gnawing as the man who gnawed away the Gospels? Truly, Euxine, you have brought forth a beast more acceptable to philosophers than to Christians. For that dog Diogenes, carrying a lamp around at noon, wanted to find a man; Marcion, having put out the light of his faith, lost the God he had found.

His disciples will not deny that his first faith was one with ours, his own letter being witness; so that from this point he can already be marked out as a heretic, since, deserting what he had been before, he afterwards chose for himself what had not been before. For a thing will be counted heresy to the extent that it is brought in later, just as that will be held to be truth which has been handed down from before and from the beginning. But another treatise will uphold this step against heretics, who are to be refuted even without discussing their doctrines: that they are such by the prescription of novelty. Now, since a real engagement must sometimes be allowed, lest the shortcut of prescription, if called upon everywhere, be put down to lack of confidence, I shall first set out my opponent's rule, so that no one may be unaware of the ground on which the principal question is to be fought.

The man of Pontus brings in two gods, like the two Clashing Rocks of his own shipwreck: the one whom he could not deny, that is, the Creator, that is, ours; and the one whom he will never be able to prove, that is, his own. The unhappy man took the impulse for this presumption from a simple saying of the Lord, who applied those examples of the good and the bad tree to human beings, not to gods: that the good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor the bad tree good fruit — that is, neither does a good mind or faith produce bad works, nor a bad one good works. For he was sick (as many are even now, and heretics above all) over the question of evil — where does evil come from? — and, his senses dulled by the very excess of his curiosity, he found the Creator declaring: “I am he who creates evils.” The more he presumed him to be the author of evil, on the strength of other arguments too, which persuade any perverse person in that way, the more he interpreted the Creator as the bad tree producing bad fruit, namely evils, and presumed that there must be another god, on the side of the good tree, with good fruit. And so, finding in Christ what seemed to be another arrangement, one of sole and pure kindness, as though different from the Creator's, he easily argued that a new and foreign divinity had been revealed in his Christ; and thereafter, with a little leaven, he soured the whole lump of the faith with heretical acid. He also had a certain Cerdo as instructor in this stumbling-block; the two of them, being blind, the more easily supposed they had seen two gods, for they had not seen the one whole. To the bleary-eyed even a single lamp is many. The one god, then, whom he was compelled to acknowledge, he destroyed by defaming him with evil; the other, whom he strove to invent, he built up by preferring him for goodness. On what articles he has arranged these natures we shall show in our replies themselves.

The principal contest, then, and hence the whole of it, concerns number: whether it is permissible to bring in two gods — by poetic and pictorial licence, if it comes to that, and now by a third kind, the heretical. But Christian truth has declared strictly: “God, if he is not one, is not,” because we more worthily believe that whatever is not as it ought to be does not exist. And so that you may know that God must be one, ask what God is, and you will find it no other way. As far as the human condition can define anything about God, I define what the conscience of all will also acknowledge: that God is the supreme great, established in eternity — for this state must be ascribed to eternity, which makes God the supreme great, since this is what eternity is in God — and so with the rest, so that God is the supreme great in form, in reason, in might, and in power. Since all agree on this — for no one will deny that God is something supremely great, except one who could declare, on the contrary, that God is something lowest and small, so as to deny God by taking away what is God's — what will then be the condition of the supreme great itself? Surely that nothing be equal to it, that is, that there be no other supreme great; because if there were, it would be equalled, and if it were equalled it would no longer be the supreme great, the condition and, so to speak, the law being overturned which allows nothing to be equal to the supreme great. Therefore the supreme great must be unique — which it will be by having no equal — or it will not be the supreme great. So it will exist in no other way than through that by which it has being, that is, by being altogether unique. Accordingly, since God is the supreme great, our truth has rightly declared: “God, if he is not one, is not” — not as though we doubted that God exists when we say “if not one, he is not,” but because we define the one whom we confidently hold to exist as being that which, if he is not, he is not God. Further, if the supreme great must be unique, then God will also be unique: not God except as the supreme great, not the supreme great except as having no equal, and not having no equal except by being unique. Certainly, whatever other god you introduce, you will not be able to maintain him as God in any other form than by ascribing to him too what is proper to divinity, both eternity and supreme greatness. How then will two supreme greats stand together, when this is what the supreme great is — to have no equal — and to have no equal belongs to one alone and can in no way exist in two?

But someone will argue that two supreme greats can indeed exist, distinct and separated within their own borders, and will doubtless cite the example of the kingdoms of the earth, so many in number and yet each supreme great in its own region; and he will think that human things may everywhere be compared with divine. Well, if room is given to this argument, what prevents the introduction — I do not say of a third and a fourth god — but of as many gods as there are kings of nations? It is God who is in question, and it is chiefly his property to admit comparison with no example. Nature itself will proclaim this, even if there were no Isaiah — or rather God himself through Isaiah: “To whom will you liken me?” Human things may perhaps be compared with divine things, but not so with God. For God is one thing, the things of God another. In short, you who use the example of a king as a supreme great, take care that you may no longer be able to use it. For a king, even though he is supreme great on his throne, next to God, is nevertheless below God; and when compared with God he will fall from being the supreme great, since that is transferred to God. If so, how do you use for comparison with God the example of a thing which is lost the moment it comes to comparison? And what if even among kings the supreme great cannot be seen in many places but is unique and singular — namely in him who, as king of kings, by the height of his greatness and the subjection of the other ranks, is held to be the summit of dominion? But even kings who preside singly, with undivided rule, over what I may call petty kingdoms — if they are brought together from every side for examination, to establish which of them excels in the resources and strength of his kingdom, the summit of greatness must necessarily be distilled into one, all the others being gradually squeezed out and excluded from the height of greatness by the outcome of the comparison. So then, although the supreme great seems to exist in many places while scattered, in its own strength, its own nature, and its own state it is unique. Accordingly, when two gods are compared as two supreme greats, the unity of the supreme great must yield to one of them by the verdict of the comparison; for the supreme consists in its victory, when another great one — not, however, supreme — has been overcome, and, possessing through the defeat of its rival a kind of solitude in the singularity of its pre-eminence, it is unique. This inescapable grip constrains the verdict to this: either it must be denied that God is the supreme great, which no wise man will allow, or that greatness must be shared with no other.

Or what reason has put together two supreme greats? For first I shall ask: why not more, if two? since the substance of divinity would have to be believed the richer if number were fitting for it. Valentinus was more honourable and more generous: having once dared to conceive two, Bythos and Sige, he then poured out a swarm of divinity, a litter of as many as thirty Aeons, like Aeneas's sow. Whatever reason does not allow several supreme greats to be admitted does not allow two either, since two are themselves several. After one comes number. A reason that could admit two could admit more as well; for two is already a multitude, once unity has been exceeded. In short, among us the force of that reason does not allow many gods to be believed, by the very limit by which that rule, establishing one God, does not allow two: namely, that God must be that to which nothing is equal, as the supreme great, and that that is unique to which nothing is equal. Now then, two supreme greats, two equals — for what worthwhile purpose, what advantage, would they be reckoned? What would number matter, when two equals do not differ from one? For what is the same in two is one thing. Even if there were more equals, they would all have been just as much one, differing in nothing among themselves inasmuch as they are equal. Further, if neither of the two differs from the other, since both are supreme greats inasmuch as both are gods, and neither surpasses the other, they show no reason for their number, having no pre-eminence; yet the number of divinity ought to rest on the highest reason, not least because its worship too would be thrown into doubt. For see: looking on two gods as equal as two supreme greats, what should I do? If I worshipped both, I should fear that the excess of duty might be thought superstition rather than religion, because two so equal, each containing both, I could win over in one, bearing witness by that very act to their equality and unity, as I venerated the one in the other, since in one there are two for me. If I worshipped one, I should equally reflect that I might seem to pour shame on the emptiness of a number made superfluous by having no difference. That is, I would judge it safer to worship neither than one with scruple, or both in vain.

So far we seem to have argued as though Marcion set up two equal gods. For while maintaining that God, the supreme great, must be believed unique, and excluding equality from him, we have treated them as two equals; nevertheless, by teaching that they cannot be equal according to the form of the supreme great, we have sufficiently established that there cannot be two. Otherwise, we know well that Marcion sets up unequal gods: the one a judge, fierce, mighty in war; the other gentle, mild, and simply good and supremely good. Let us examine this side too: whether difference at least can accommodate two, if equality could not. Here again the same rule of the supreme great will be our advocate, since it lays claim to the whole state of divinity. For, meeting my opponent and, as it were, laying hands on him to hold his view fast — since he does not deny that the Creator is God — I most justly plead in bar against him that there is no room for difference between those whom, having confessed them equally to be gods, he cannot make different. Not that even human beings may not be very different under the same name; but because nothing is to be called God, since nothing is to be believed God, except the supreme great. Since, then, he is compelled to acknowledge as the supreme great the one whom he does not deny to be God, it cannot be allowed that he should ascribe to the supreme great any diminution by which it would be made subject to another supreme great. For it ceases to be, if it is made subject. But it is not God's part to fall from his state, that is, from being the supreme great. For even in that more powerful god the supreme great could be endangered, if it can be depreciated in the Creator. So when two gods are declared to be two supreme greats, neither can be greater or less than the other, neither loftier or lower than the other. Deny that he is God whom you call inferior; deny that he is the supreme great whom you believe less. But if you have confessed both to be God, you have confessed two supreme greats. You will take nothing away from the one, nor add anything to the other. By acknowledging the divinity you have denied the difference.

Against this you will try to shake our treatment by way of the name of God, as a name loosely used and allowed to others as well, because it is written: “God has stood in the assembly of gods, and in their midst he will judge between gods,” and: “I said, You are gods.” Yet, you will say, the possession of the supreme great does not belong to these just because they are called gods; so neither does it belong to the Creator. I shall answer the fool — who has not reflected on this either — that the same argument might be turned back against Marcion's god: he too is called god, and yet is not thereby proved to be the supreme great, any more than the Creator's angels or men. If sharing names prejudges conditions, how many worthless slaves insult kings by bearing the names of Alexander and Darius and Holofernes! Yet the kings will not for that reason lose what they are. For even the idols of the nations are commonly called gods, but none is God by the fact that it is called god. So I defend the supreme great in the Creator not for the sake of the name of God, nor the sound or sign of that name, but for the very substance to which this name has fallen. Finding this alone unborn and unmade, alone eternal and the founder of the universe, I ascribe and claim the supreme great for it not because of its name but because of its state, not because of its title but because of its condition. And because the substance to which I ascribe it has already come to be called God, you think I am ascribing it to the name, since I must necessarily indicate by the name the substance to which I ascribe it — namely, that in which he consists who is called God. But the supreme great is reckoned from the substance, not from the name. Indeed Marcion too, claiming it for his god, claims it according to state, not according to vocabulary.

That supreme great, then, which we ascribe to God by the law of substance, not by the chance of a name, we contend must be present equally in two who consist of that substance which is called God; because in so far as they are called gods — that is, supreme greats, being of a substance rightly called unborn and eternal and therefore great and supreme — to that extent one supreme great cannot be held less or lower than another supreme great. If the happiness, loftiness, and integrity of the supreme great will stand firm in Marcion's god, it will stand equally in ours; if not in ours, then not in Marcion's either. Therefore the two supreme greats will be neither equal, because the rule of the supreme great already laid down forbids it, not tolerating comparison; nor unequal, because another rule of the supreme great confronts us, not admitting diminution. You are stuck, Marcion, in the middle of the surge of your own Pontus. The waves of truth engulf you on both sides. You can set up gods neither equal nor unequal, for there are not two. As far as the treatment of number properly goes — although the whole matter is fought over the two gods — we have meanwhile enclosed him within these lines, within which we shall now engage on the particular properties.

First, the Marcionites build their stupor on a lofty brow, because they bring forward a new god, as though we were ashamed of the old one. Children too are puffed up by new shoes; but, shod by the old tutor, they will soon be beaten for their vain glory. So I hear of a new god — in the old world, in the old age, and under the old God unknown and unheard of — a god whom, through so many ages past known to no one and ancient only in his very obscurity, a certain Jesus Christ (himself new under old names) has revealed, and no one else before him. I thank them for this boast, since with its great help I shall now prove the heresy — that is, the profession of a new divinity. This is the novelty that has produced gods for the heathen too, by a new and ever new title of consecration for each. What new god is there except a false one? Not even Saturn will his great antiquity prove a god today, since novelty too brought him forth once, when it first consecrated him. But living and genuine divinity is reckoned neither by novelty nor by antiquity but by its own truth. Eternity has no time, for it is itself all time. What it makes, it cannot undergo. That which may not be born is without age. God, if he is old, will not be; if he is new, was not. Novelty testifies to a beginning; age threatens an end. But God is as foreign to beginning and end as he is to time, the arbiter and measurer of beginning and end.

I know, of course, in what sense they boast of a new god: in respect of his being acknowledged. But I wished to strike back at the very novelty of the knowledge that strikes untrained souls, and at the natural charm of novelty itself, and so to go on from here to challenge them about an unknown god. For in setting him up as new by acknowledgment, they show that before acknowledgment he was unknown. Come, then, back to the lines and to your position! Persuade me that God could have been unknown. I do indeed find altars set out to unknown gods, but that is Attic idolatry; likewise to uncertain gods, but that is Roman superstition. Further, uncertain gods are less known, as being less certain, and so unknown, in so far as they are less certain. Which of the two titles shall we carve for Marcion's god? Both, I think: uncertain now and unknown before. For just as the known God, the Creator, made him unknown, so the certain God made him uncertain. But I will not wander so far as to say: if God was unknown and hidden, some region of hiding-places overshadowed him, itself also new and unknown, and likewise still uncertain now — certainly some immense region, and undoubtedly greater than the one it hid. Rather I shall propose briefly and pursue most fully the plea that God neither could have been unknown by reason of his greatness nor ought to have been by reason of his goodness, especially being superior to our Creator in both.

But since I notice that in certain matters the proof of every new and formerly unknown god must be referred to the pattern of the Creator, I must first show that we do this with reason, so that I may the more firmly rely on the support of a reason once set out. Before all else, how can it be that you, who acknowledge the Creator as God and confess that he was known first, should not realize that the other must be examined by you by the same methods by which you have already learned, in the first case, to know God? Everything earlier has set the norm for what is later. Two gods are now proposed, an unknown and a known. About the known there is no question: it is agreed that he exists, for he would not have been known unless he existed. About the unknown the dispute presses: for he may even not exist, since if he existed he would have been known. What is sought, then, is uncertain as long as it is unknown; and as long as it is sought it may also not exist, as long as it is uncertain. You have a God who is certain, as known, and one who is uncertain, as unknown. If so, do you not think it can be defended with just reason that uncertain things be proved by the norm, form, and rule of certain things? Otherwise, if in this cause, itself still uncertain, arguments are also drawn from uncertain things, a chain of questions will be tangled up from the discussion of those arguments, equally uncertain, which put faith at risk through uncertainty; and one will go on into those endless questions which the apostle does not love. But if the certain, undoubted, and settled parts of the rule are used, they will prejudge the uncertain, doubtful, and unsettled ones. Clearly, where a difference of state is found, uncertain things perhaps need not be referred to the form of certain ones, being released from any further appeal to comparison by the difference in their principal state. But when two gods are proposed, their principal state is common to them. For in being God, both are: unborn, unmade, eternal. This will be the principal state; the rest Marcion must see to, if he has arranged them in difference. For the later points are not under discussion — indeed they will not even be admitted — if the principal state is agreed. And it is agreed, since both are gods. And so those whose state is agreed to be common, when under it they are called to proof, if they are uncertain, must be referred to the form of those certain ones with whom they are reckoned to share the principal state, so that they may accordingly share in the manner of proof as well. Hence I shall draw the line most firmly: he is not God who is uncertain today because he was unknown before, since of one who is agreed to exist it would be agreed on this very ground that he was never unknown,

since from the beginning of things their Maker was discovered along with them, and they were brought forth for this very purpose, that God might be known. For even if Moses, somewhat later, seems to have been the first to dedicate the God of the world in the temple of his writings, the birth of acknowledgment will not for that reason be reckoned from the Pentateuch; for the whole of Moses' pen does not institute knowledge of the Creator but narrates it from the beginning, to be traced from paradise and Adam, not from Egypt and Moses. Indeed, the greater part of the human race, who have not even heard the name of Moses, let alone his writings, nevertheless know the God of Moses. Even while idolatry overshadows them with so great a dominion, they still speak of him apart, as though by a proper name, as “God,” and “God of gods,” and “if God grant,” and “what pleases God,” and “I commend it to God.” See whether they know him whom they testify to be able to do all things. Nor do they owe this to any books of Moses. The soul came before prophecy. For the consciousness of God is the soul's dowry from the beginning, the same and no other in Egyptians, in Syrians, and in the people of Pontus. Do not, barbarous heretic, make Abraham earlier than the world. Even if the Creator had been the God of one family, he would still not have been later than yours: he was known even to the people of Pontus before him. Let yours, then, take his pattern from his predecessor, the uncertain from the certain, the unknown from the known. Never will God be hidden, never will God be lacking; he will always be understood, always heard, even seen, in the way he wills. God has witnesses: all this that we are and in which we are. Thus he is proved both God and one, in that he is not unknown, while the other still labours to be proved.

“And rightly so,” they say; “for who is not better known to his own than to strangers?” No one. I seize on this saying too. For how can anything be foreign to God? To him nothing would be foreign, if he were anyone at all — for this belongs to God, that all things are his and all things belong to him — or else he would at once hear from us: “What then has he to do with strangers?” He will hear this more fully in its place. For now it is enough that no one is proved whose work is not proved. For just as the Creator is on this ground both God and undoubted God, that all things are his and nothing is foreign to him, so the other is on this ground not God, that all things are not his and are therefore foreign to him. In short, if the universe is the Creator's, I do not even see room for another god. All things are full and occupied by their Author. If any space in creation is empty for any divinity, clearly it will be empty for a false one. Truth is plain to be seen before falsehood. Why does not so great a host of idols make room somewhere for Marcion's god?

So I demand this also after the pattern of the Creator: that his god ought to have been known from the works of some world, some man, some age of his own; since even the error of the world has presumed to be gods, for this very reason, those whom it sometimes admits to have been men, because something seems to have been provided by each for the needs and comforts of life. So this too, after the pattern of God, has been believed divine: to establish or show something fitting and necessary for human affairs. Since, then, authority was lent to false divinity from the same source from which it had first come to the true, Marcion's god ought to have produced at least one little chickpea of his own, so that he might be proclaimed some new Triptolemus. Or else show a reason worthy of God why he created nothing, if he exists; for he would have created, if he had existed — by that same prejudgment by which it is plain that our God exists for no other reason than that he created all this. For the prescription will stand once for all: they cannot both confess the Creator to be God and fail to prove the one whom they wish to be equally believed God by the pattern of him whom they and everyone acknowledge as God; so that, since no one doubts the Creator to be God for this very reason — that he created all this — for this very reason no one ought to believe that he too is God who created nothing, unless perhaps some reason is offered.

That reason must be one of two: either he did not will to create anything, or he could not. There is no third. But not to have been able is unworthy of God. Whether not to have willed is worthy, I wish to inquire. Tell me, Marcion: did your god will to be known at some time or not? With what other purpose did he come down and preach and suffer and rise again, than that he might be known? Without doubt, if he was known, he willed it; for nothing would be done concerning him unless he had willed it. He, then, who took such pains to make himself known that he was displayed in the disgrace of flesh — and a greater disgrace if the flesh was false, for it is the more shameful if he also lied about the substance of his body — who even took upon himself the Creator's curse, hanging on a tree: how much more honourably he would have prepared the way for knowledge of himself by some signs of his own workmanship! — especially since he had to be made known against one by whom he had not been known from the beginning through works. For how can it be that the Creator, not knowing (as the Marcionites will have it) that there was another god above him, and asserting even on oath that he alone existed, armed the knowledge of himself with such great works, though, presuming himself unique, he need not have taken such care; while that loftier one, knowing that the inferior god was so equipped, provided himself with no means of being acknowledged? — when he ought to have created works even more distinguished and splendid, so that, like the Creator, he might be known as God from his works, and from nobler works as more powerful and more noble than the Creator.

Moreover, even if we could admit that he exists, we should have to argue that he exists without cause. For he would be without cause who had no work, since every work is the cause of there being someone whose work it is. Further, inasmuch as nothing ought to exist without cause — because if it is without cause, it is just as if it did not exist — to that extent I will more worthily believe that God does not exist than that he exists without cause. For he is without cause who, having no work, has no cause. But God ought not to exist without cause, that is, without work. So whenever I show that he exists without cause, as though he existed, I establish this: that he does not exist, because if he had existed, he would certainly not have been without cause. In the same way I say that he seeks faith from man without cause — faith which is accustomed otherwise to believe in God as shaped by the authority of his works — because he has provided nothing of the kind through which man has learned God. For even if very many believe in him, they do not therefore believe with reason, having no pledge of God, namely works worthy of God. And so on this account of idleness and lack of works he is close to both impudence and malice: impudence, in that he seeks a faith not owed to him, having provided nothing to prepare it; malice, in that he has made many guilty of unbelief by providing nothing for faith.

When we drive out by this step a god for whom no creation of his own has set up in advance a witness as proper and as worthy of God as the Creator's, the most shameless Marcionites, wrinkling their noses, turn to demolishing the Creator's works. “Of course,” they say, “a great work, worthy of God, is the world!” Is the Creator, then, not God at all? Certainly he is God. Then neither is the world unworthy of God; for God would have made nothing unworthy of himself, even though he made the world for man and not for himself, and even though every work is inferior to its maker. And yet, if it is unworthy of God to have made something of a certain kind, how much more unworthy of God is it to have made nothing at all! … even something unworthy, so that he might be hoped to be the author of worthier things as well.

To say something, then, even about this supposedly unworthy world — which among the Greeks too has a name meaning ornament and adornment, not filth — those very professors of wisdom from whose minds every heresy draws its life declared these “unworthy” substances to be gods: Thales water, Heraclitus fire, Anaximenes air, Anaximander all the heavenly bodies, Strato heaven and earth, Zeno air and ether, Plato the stars, which he calls the fiery race of gods. For concerning the world — considering its greatness, force, power, honour, and beauty, and the help, faithfulness, and law of the several elements, which conspire to generate, nourish, complete, and renew all things — they were afraid, as most of the natural philosophers were, lest its substances, so great as they are, should be thought less than divine; and these substances the magi of the Persians, the hierophants of the Egyptians, and the gymnosophists of the Indians also worship. Even the common superstition of popular idolatry, when it is ashamed of the names and fables of the dead of old in its images, takes refuge in interpreting them as natural things and cloaks its disgrace with cleverness: it figures Jupiter as fiery substance and his Juno as airy, following the sound of the Greek words; likewise Vesta as fire, the Camenae as water, and the Great Mother as the earth, reaped for its seed, ploughed with arms, watered with washings. So too, because Osiris is forever being buried, sought alive, and found with joy, they argue from him the reliability of the returning crops, the living elements, and the recurring year; just as the lions of Mithras philosophize the mysteries of dry and burning nature. And for the substances higher in place or state it is enough that they have more readily been held to be gods than unworthy of God. Shall I come down to lowly things? One little flower from the hedgerows — I do not say from the meadows; one little shell from any sea — I do not say from the Red Sea; one little feather of a grouse — I say nothing of the peacock: will it tell you that the Creator is a shabby craftsman?

But when you mock even the smaller animals, which the greatest Craftsman has deliberately enlarged with skill or strength — teaching in this way that greatness is proved in smallness, just as power is in weakness, according to the apostle — imitate, if you can, the bee's buildings, the ant's granaries, the spider's webs, the silkworm's threads; endure, if you can, those very beasts of your bed and your mat, the blister-beetle's poison, the fly's sting, the gnat's trumpet and lance. What will the greater things be like, when you are either helped or harmed by such small ones? — so that you should not despise the Creator even in small things. Finally, look around at yourself, consider man inside and out: will even this work of our God please you, which your lord, that better god, loved so much, for whose sake he took the trouble to come down from the third heaven into these poor elements, for whose cause he was even crucified in this little cell of the Creator? He, at least, has not to this day rejected the Creator's water, with which he washes his own, nor the oil with which he anoints his own, nor the mixture of honey and milk with which he feeds his own as infants, nor the bread by which he represents his very body, needing even in his own sacraments the beggarly elements of the Creator. But you, a disciple above your master and a servant above your lord, are wiser than he, destroying what he desires. I want to see whether you are at least sincere, so that you yourself do not covet what you destroy. You are against heaven, and yet in your houses you seek the freedom of heaven; you despise the earth — plainly the mother of your flesh, which you now treat as an enemy — and yet you wring out all its marrow for your food; you reject the sea too, but only up to its produce, which you reckon a holier food. If I offer you a rose, you will not scorn the Creator. Hypocrite! Even if you were to prove yourself a Marcionite — that is, a repudiator of the Creator — by starving yourself to death (for that is what you ought to seek among you in place of martyrdom, if the world displeased you), into whatever matter you are dissolved, you will be making use of the Creator's substance. How great is the obstinacy of your hardness! You depreciate the things in which you both live and die.

After this, or before it, you will say that he too has his own creation, his own world, and his own heaven — about that third heaven we shall see, if we come to discussing your apostle as well. Meanwhile, whatever his substance is, it ought surely to have appeared along with its god. But as it is, how can it be that the lord was revealed in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while his substance has not been discovered at all even by now, the fifteenth year of the emperor Severus? Since it surpasses the Creator's trifles, it would surely have ceased to lie hidden once its lord and author was no longer hidden. And so, if it could not itself be shown in this world, how did its lord appear in this world? If this world held the lord, why could it not hold his substance — unless perhaps the substance was greater than its lord?

Now comes the question of place, which concerns both that higher world and its god himself. For see: if he too has his own world beneath him, above the Creator, he must have made it in a place, whose space lay empty between his own feet and the Creator's head. So God himself was in a place and was making the world in a place, and that place will now be greater than both God and the world; for what contains is always greater than what is contained. And we must see whether some leftover plots are not still empty there, in which some third god could squeeze himself in with his world. So start counting gods now. For the place too will be a god, not only as greater than God but also as unborn and unmade and therefore eternal and equal to God, the place in which God has always been. Next, if he too built his world out of some underlying matter, unborn, unmade, and coeval with God, as Marcion holds concerning the Creator, you reduce this too to the majesty of the place, which has enclosed both God and matter, two gods. For matter too is a god according to the form of divinity, being unborn, unmade, and eternal. Or if he built the world out of nothing, Marcion will be compelled to hold this of the Creator as well, to whom he assigns matter as the substance of the world. But he too will have to have made it out of matter, since the same reasoning that is set against the Creator confronts him as well, as being equally God. And so for the moment count me three gods of Marcion: the maker, the place, and the matter. In the same way he puts the Creator in a place, reckoning him surely on the same terms, and assigns him matter, surely unborn and unmade and on that account eternal, like its lord. Further, by ascribing evil to matter — unborn to the unborn, unmade to the unmade, eternal to the eternal — he has now made a fourth god. You have, then, three substances of divinity in the higher realm and four in the lower. When their own Christs are added to these — one who appeared under Tiberius, the other who is promised by the Creator — Marcion is plainly wronged by those who presume that he introduces two gods, since he assigns nine, though without knowing it.

Since, then, no other world appears, any more than its god does, it follows that they divide the two kinds of things, visible and invisible, between two gods as their authors, and so claim the invisible things for their own god. But who could bring himself to believe — unless it be a heretical spirit — that the invisible things belong to him who has set forth nothing visible, rather than to him who, by making the visible things, has also created faith in the invisible, when it is much more just to give assent on the strength of some samples than of none? We shall see to which author the apostle too ascribes the invisible things, when we have examined him as well. For now, mostly by common sense and sound arguments, we are laying the ground of faith for the appeal to the Scriptures that is to follow, confirming that this diversity of visible and invisible is to be ascribed to God the Creator, just as his whole work consists of diversities: of corporeal and incorporeal, animate and inanimate, vocal and mute, moving and stationary, fertile and barren, dry and moist, hot and cold. So too diversity has tempered man himself, both in body and in feeling: some members strong, others weak; some honourable, others dishonourable; some paired, others single; some matching, others unmatched. So also in feeling: now joy, now anxiety; now love, now hatred; now anger, now gentleness. If it is so, that this universe of creation has been composed of parts that rival one another, then invisible things too are owed to the visible, and are to be ascribed to no other author than the one to whom their rivals are ascribed. Those who brand the Creator himself as inconsistent — commanding what he forbade and forbidding what he commanded, striking and healing — why do they take him as uniform in this one respect, as maker of visible things only, when he should likewise be believed to have made both visible and invisible, just as both life and death, both evils and peace? And surely, if those invisible things are greater than the Creator's visible things, which are great in their own place, it is fitting in this way too that the greater should belong to him to whom the great belong; for neither great things, still less greater, belong to one to whom not even small things are shown to belong.

Hard pressed by these arguments, they burst out: “This one work is enough for our god: that he has set man free by his supreme and pre-eminent goodness, which is to be preferred to all your locusts.” O greater god, whose work, great as it is, could be found only in the man of a lesser god! But first you must prove that he exists, through the means by which God must be proved — through works — and only then through benefits. For first it is asked whether he exists, and then what he is like; the one is discerned from works, the other from benefits. Besides, it is not established that he exists because he is said to have set man free; rather, if it is established that he exists, then he will also be said to have set man free, so that it may be established whether he did, since he could both exist and not have set man free. How, then, because he is said to have set man free, will he be believed to exist, when he could both exist and not have set man free?

Now, in this part of the question of the unknown god, if it has been sufficiently established that he created nothing as surely as that he ought to have created, so as to be known from his works — since, if he had existed, he ought to have been known, and indeed from the beginning of things, for it would not have befitted God to lie hidden — I must go back to the root of the question of the unknown god, so as to shake down its other twigs too. For first it must be asked why he who afterwards brought himself forward into knowledge did so afterwards and not from the beginning of things. For these he was surely necessary, as God — and indeed, the better, the more necessary — and he ought not to have lain hidden. For it cannot be said that there was no material or cause for knowing God, since man, whom he now succours, was in the world from the beginning, and so was the Creator's malice, against which, as the good god, he brings succour. Therefore he was either ignorant of the cause and material of his necessary revelation, or doubted, or could not, or would not. All these are unworthy of God, above all of the supremely good. But we shall fill out this topic elsewhere with a reproach of his late revelation, as now with a demonstration only.

Suppose, then, that he has now come forward into knowledge when he wished, when he could, when the fated hour arrived. For perhaps the ascending node stood in his way, or some malignant stars, or Saturn in quartile, or Mars in trine. For the Marcionites are very much given to astrology, and are not ashamed even of this: of making their living from the Creator's own stars. Here we must deal with the quality of the revelation: whether he was revealed in a worthy manner, so that it may be established whether truly, and so that he may be believed to exist whose worthy revelation has been established. For what is worthy of God will prove God. We lay down that God is first to be known by nature and then recognized by teaching: by nature from his works, by teaching from his proclamations. But one who has no nature of his own has no natural instruments at hand. He ought therefore at least to have wrought his revelation by proclamations, especially since he had to be revealed against one who, by so many and such great works both of creation and of proclamation, had yet scarcely filled man with faith. How, then, was he known? If by human conjecture, I deny that God can be known otherwise than through himself — appealing not only to the pattern of the Creator but also to the condition both of divine greatness and of human smallness — lest man should seem greater than God, as having dragged him out by his own powers, as it were, into the public light of acknowledgment when he did not of his own accord wish to be known; since human smallness, as the experience of every age shows, knows how to invent gods for itself more easily than to follow the true one, whom men already understand by nature. Otherwise, if man is to invent a god in this way — as Romulus did Consus, Tatius Cloacina, Hostilius Fear, Metellus Alburnus, and a certain person not long ago Antinous — others will be allowed to do it too. We know Marcion as a shipmaster, not as a king or an emperor.

“On the contrary,” say the Marcionites, “our god, even if not from the beginning, even if not through creation, has been revealed through himself in Christ Jesus.” A book will be devoted to Christ as well, on his whole state — for the subjects must be kept apart, so that they may be treated more fully and in better order. Meanwhile it will be enough, at this stage, to meet them by showing, and that briefly, that Christ carried about the laws of no other god than the Creator. In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Christ Jesus deigned to flow down from heaven. In what year of the elder Antoninus the saving spirit of Marcion, as he would have it, breathed out of his Pontus like a dog-day wind, I have not troubled to find out. This much, however, is agreed: he is an Antonine heretic, impious under Pius. Now from Tiberius to Antoninus there are about one hundred and fifteen and a half years and half a month. They put just that much time between Christ and Marcion. Since, then, it was under Antoninus that Marcion first introduced this god, as we have proved, the matter is at once plain, if you have any sense: the dates prejudge that what first came forward under Antoninus did not come forward under Tiberius; that is, that the god of Antoninus's reign was not the god of Tiberius's, and so that he was not revealed by Christ who, it is agreed, was first proclaimed by Marcion.

To prove now that this is agreed, I shall take what remains from our opponents themselves. The separation of the law and the gospel is Marcion's own and principal work, and his disciples cannot deny what they hold in their chief document, by which they are initiated into this heresy and hardened in it. For this is Marcion's Antitheses, that is, “Contrary Oppositions,” which try to set the gospel at odds with the law, so that from the difference between the sayings of the two documents they may argue a difference of gods as well. Since, then, it is precisely that separation of law and gospel that has insinuated another god of the gospel over against the god of the law, it is evident that before that separation the god who became known from the argument of separation was not known; and so that he was not revealed by Christ, who lived before the separation, but was invented by Marcion, who set up the separation against the peace of gospel and law — a peace which, from the appearing of Christ to the audacity of Marcion, had been kept unharmed and unshaken by that reasoning which held no other god of both law and gospel than the Creator, against whom, so long afterwards, separation was let loose by the man of Pontus.

To this most straightforward proof we must add a defence against the clamour of the other side. For they say that Marcion did not so much innovate the rule by separating law and gospel as restore it after it had earlier been adulterated. O Christ, most patient Lord, who put up with the perversion of your preaching for so many years, until, of course, Marcion should come to your rescue! For they also bring up Peter himself and the others, the pillars of the apostleship, as having been rebuked by Paul for not walking with a straight foot toward the truth of the gospel — by that Paul, surely, who, still raw in grace and indeed anxious lest he had run or was running in vain, was then conferring for the first time with the apostles who came before him. If, then, still fervent as a neophyte against Judaism, he thought something in their conduct deserved rebuke — namely, their table-fellowship that shifted with the company — though afterwards he himself was in practice to become all things to all, that he might gain all, to the Jews as a Jew and to those under the law as under the law: do you want that rebuke, which concerned conduct alone, and conduct that would later please its own accuser, to be held suspect of a betrayal of the preaching about God as well? On the contrary, concerning the unity of the preaching, as we read above, they had joined right hands, and by the very division of their tasks had agreed on their partnership in the gospel; as he says elsewhere too: “Whether it was I or they, so we preach.”

And even if he wrote that certain false brothers had crept in who wanted to transfer the Galatians to another gospel, he himself shows that this adulteration of the gospel aimed not at transferring them to faith in another god and Christ but at keeping the discipline of the law: he catches them, that is, insisting on circumcision and observing times and days and months and years of Jewish ceremonies, which they ought to have recognized as already set aside according to the renewed arrangement of the Creator, who had long ago proclaimed this very thing through his prophets. So through Isaiah: “The old things have passed away,” he says; “behold, the new things which I now make.” So too through Jeremiah: “And I will make a covenant, not such as I made with your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt”; and elsewhere: “Break up for yourselves new fallow ground, and be circumcised to your God, and circumcise the foreskins of your heart.” So the apostle, establishing this circumcision and this new ground, was dissuading them from those old ceremonies as well, which their own founder declared would one day cease, through Hosea: “And I will turn away all her mirth, and her feast days, and new moons, and sabbaths, and all her ceremonies.” So too through Isaiah: “Your new moons and sabbaths and the great day I cannot bear; your holidays and fasting and feast days my soul hates.” If, then, the Creator had long since rejected all these things and the apostle was declaring that they must now be rejected, the apostle's very judgment, in agreement with the Creator's decrees, proves that no other god was preached by the apostle than the one whose decrees he wished now to be acknowledged; and in this cause he brands as false both the apostles and the brothers who were transferring the gospel of the Creator's Christ from the newness foretold by the Creator to the oldness rejected by the Creator.

Besides, if, in preaching a new god, he wished to exclude the law of the old God, why does he lay down nothing about the new god but only about the old law — unless because, while faith in the Creator remained, only his law was to cease? As that psalm had sung beforehand: “Let us break their bonds from us and cast away their yoke from us” — from the time, that is, when “the nations raged and the peoples meditated vain things; the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.” And surely, if another god were being preached by Paul, there would be no dispute whether the law was to be kept or not, since it would not belong to the new lord, the rival of the law. For the very newness and difference of the god would have removed not only the question of an old and alien law but all mention of it. But this was the whole state of the question: how, when the same God of the law was being preached in Christ, his law could be set aside. Faith, then, always stood firm in the Creator and his Christ, but conduct and discipline wavered. For some disputed about eating what had been sacrificed to idols, others about the veiling of women, others about marriages and divorces, some even about the hope of the resurrection; about God, no one. For if this question too had been disputed, it would also be found in the apostle, and all the more as the principal question.

But if after the times of the apostles the truth suffered adulteration concerning the rule of God, then the apostolic tradition in its own time suffered none concerning the rule of God; and no other tradition of the apostles is to be acknowledged than that which is set forth today in their own churches. But you will find no church of apostolic stock that is not Christian in the Creator. Or if these are to have been corrupt from the beginning, which will be sound? The Creator's opponents, no doubt! Produce, then, one of your churches of apostolic stock, and you will have carried the case. Since, then, it is established in every way that there was no other god in the rule of this sacred pledge from Christ down to Marcion than the Creator, our proof is now sufficiently fortified, by which we have shown that knowledge of the heretical god began from the separation of gospel and law; and the earlier definition is also supported, that no god is to be believed whom a man has composed from his own mind — unless, plainly, he is a prophet, that is, one who does not speak from his own mind. If Marcion can be called that, it will also have to be proved … there will be no need to discuss it further. For with this wedge of truth every heresy is driven out, once Christ is shown to be the bearer of no other god than the Creator.

But how is the antichrist to be overthrown from the foundation, unless, the defence by prescription being relaxed, room is also given for crushing his other insinuations? Let us come, then, from here to the very person of the god — or rather to his shadow and phantom, like his Christ — and let him be examined by that for which he is preferred to the Creator. And surely there will be sure rules for examining the goodness of a god. But first I must find it and lay hold of it, and so bring it to the rules. For when I look around at the times, it is nowhere to be found from the beginning of the materials and the entry of the causes with which it ought to have been found, acting from the moment it had occasion to act. For there already was death, and sin, the sting of death, and the very malice of the Creator, against which the other god's goodness ought to have brought help, meeting this first rule of divine goodness, if it would prove itself natural: helping at once, as soon as the cause arose. For everything in God must be natural and inborn, so as to be eternal according to his state, lest it be reckoned accidental and external and therefore temporal and foreign to eternity. So in God a goodness perpetual and unbroken will be required, which, stored and ready in the treasuries of his natural properties, would precede its causes and materials and take up each as it first arose — not despise and abandon it, if it was there before.

In short, I shall ask here no less why his goodness did not work from the beginning than we asked about him why he was not revealed from the beginning. Why not, indeed? He had to be revealed through his goodness, if he existed at all. What God may not do is to be unable, still less to fail to exercise his natural properties; for if these are held back from running their course, they will not be natural. Nature knows no idleness of its own; it is judged by its acting. So neither will he seem to have been unwilling for a while to exercise his goodness, if it is by nature; for nature cannot be unwilling to be itself, since it so directs itself that if it ceased it would not exist. But goodness in Marcion's god did at one time cease from its work: therefore it was not natural goodness, since it could at some time cease, which natural things may not. And if it is not natural, it must no longer be believed eternal or equal to God: not eternal, because not natural, and establishing no perpetuity for itself from the past nor promising it for the future. For as it was not from the beginning, so without doubt it will not be to the end; it can cease to exist at some time, as it once did not exist.

Since, then, it is established that the goodness of that god ceased at the beginning — for he did not set man free from the beginning — and that it ceased by will rather than by weakness, the will that suppressed goodness will now be found to be the height of malice. For what is so malicious as to refuse to help when you can, to torment what is useful, to allow injury? In short, the whole indictment against the Creator will be written back against the one who aided his cruelties by the delay of his own goodness. For whoever has it in his hand to keep a thing from happening is held responsible for it when it happens. Man is condemned to death for tasting of one little tree; from then on sins advance with their penalties, and all now perish who have never known a single sod of paradise. And does some better god either not know this or put up with it? If he did so in order to be found better by it, how much the worse would the Creator be held! He is malicious enough in this plan too, since he both wanted the Creator to be burdened, letting his workings go on, and kept the world in distress. What will you judge of a physician who feeds a disease by delaying aid and prolongs the danger by postponing the remedy, so that he may cure it at a higher fee or with greater fame? Such is the sentence that must be passed on Marcion's god too: permitter of evil, abettor of injury, pander of grace, betrayer of kindness, which he did not show at once to its cause — as he plainly would have shown it, if he were good by nature and not by addition, supremely good by disposition and not by training, God from eternity and not from Tiberius — or rather, to speak more truly, from Cerdo and Marcion. Suppose now that this god did Tiberius the favour of having divine goodness dedicated on earth in his reign:

I hold up another rule against him: that, as everything in God must be natural, so it must be rational. I demand the reason of his goodness, since nothing else may be held good that is not rationally good, still less may goodness itself be found irrational. An evil in which there is some reason will more easily be taken for good than a good devoid of reason will escape being judged evil. I deny that the goodness of Marcion's god is rational, first on this ground: that it went forth to save a man who was a stranger to him. I know they will say that, on the contrary, this is the chief and perfect goodness, when it is poured out voluntarily and freely on strangers, without any debt of kinship; according to which we are commanded to love even our enemies, who on that account are strangers too. Why, then, did he not look upon man from the beginning, who was a stranger from the beginning? By holding back he prejudged that he had nothing to do with a stranger. Besides, the rule of loving the stranger or the enemy was preceded by the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself. Even though this comes from the Creator's law, you too must accept it, as not destroyed by Christ but rather built up. For you are commanded to love your enemy and the stranger so that you may love your neighbour all the more. The demand for goodness that is not owed is an intensifying of the goodness that is owed. But what is owed comes before what is not owed, as principal, as worthier, as prior to its servant and companion.

Since, then, the first reason of goodness is that it be shown to what is one's own, out of justice, and the second that it be shown to what is another's, out of a justice that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, how can the second reason be ascribed to one who lacks the first, having no man of his own, and whose goodness is therefore scanty? And how did a scanty goodness, which had nothing of its own, overflow onto what was another's? Show the principal reason, and then claim the one that follows. Nothing can be claimed as rational without order; far less can reason itself lose its order in anyone. Suppose now that the reason of goodness begins from the second step, toward the stranger: even that second step will not stand with reason, being destroyed in another way. For goodness even of the second kind, toward the stranger, will be held rational only if it works without injury to the one whose property he is. It is justice, first of all, that makes any goodness rational. Just as in the principal step, when shown to one's own, it will be rational if it is just, so toward the stranger too it can seem rational if it is not unjust. But what sort of goodness is it that stands by injury, and that for a stranger? For on behalf of one of one's own household an injurious goodness might perhaps be held rational to some extent. But on behalf of a stranger, to whom not even an honest goodness would lawfully be owed, by what reason will so unjust a goodness be defended as rational? For what is more unjust, more iniquitous and dishonest, than to do good to another man's slave in such a way that he is snatched from his master, claimed for another, suborned against his master's life — and, what is more shameful, while still in his master's house, still living from his master's granaries, still trembling under his master's blows? Such a claimant would be condemned even in this world — let alone a kidnapper. No differently … Marcion's god, breaking into another's world, snatches man from God, the son from the father, the nursling from the one who reared him, the servant from the master, so as to make him impious toward God, undutiful toward his father, ungrateful toward the one who reared him, worthless toward his master. I ask you: if a rational goodness makes a man like this, what would an irrational one make him? I could not think anyone more impudent than one who is baptized for another god in another's water, stretches out his hands to another god toward another's heaven, prostrates himself before another god on another's earth, gives thanks to another god over another's bread, and does works in the name of almsgiving and love for the sake of another god out of another's goods. Who is this god, so good that man becomes bad through him, so gracious that he makes another god — his own master, indeed — angry with him?

But God, as he is eternal and rational, is also, I think, perfect in all things: “For you shall be perfect, as your Father who is in heaven.” Show that his goodness too is perfect — though it is sufficiently established that it is imperfect, since it is found to be neither natural nor rational. Now it will be exposed in another way as well: no longer merely imperfect but deficient, scanty and exhausted, since it falls short of the number of its objects and is not shown to all. For not all are saved, but fewer than all the Creator's Jews and Christians. And since more perish, how can a goodness be defended as perfect which is idle for the greater part — something for a few, nothing for the many, yielding to perdition, a partner in destruction? If more are not saved, then it will be not goodness but malice that is the more perfect. For as it is the work of goodness to save, so it is the work of malice not to save. And indeed, not saving while it saves a few, it will be more perfect in not helping than in helping. You cannot turn back on the Creator the failure of goodness toward all; for the one you hold to be a judge you show must be understood as a dispenser of goodness, if you like, not a lavisher of it, as you claim yours to be. So much do you prefer your god to the Creator on the ground of this goodness alone. If he professes this alone and wholly, it ought to have been lacking to no one.

But I do not now wish to convict Marcion's god of imperfect goodness from the greater number of those who perish: it is enough that the very ones whom he saves, being found to have an imperfect salvation, show his goodness imperfect — saved, that is, as far as the soul, lost in the flesh, which with him does not rise again. Where does this halving of salvation come from, if not from a failure of goodness? What would have befitted perfect goodness more than to bring the whole man back to salvation — the whole man condemned by the Creator, the whole man chosen by the supremely good god? As far as I know, with him too it is the flesh that is baptized, the flesh that is taken away from marriage, the flesh that is butchered for confessing the name. And even if sins are imputed to the flesh, the soul's guilt comes first, and the leadership in fault is to be ascribed rather to the soul, which the flesh attends in the role of servant. In short, flesh without a soul does not sin at all. So in this too his goodness is unjust and thereby imperfect, abandoning to destruction the more innocent substance, which offends by obedience, not by choice. Though his Christ did not put on its reality, as your heresy has decided, he nevertheless deigned to take on its likeness; the very fact that he feigned it shows that he owed it something. And what is man but flesh, since it was the bodily material, not the soul, that received the name of man from its author? “And God made man,” it says, “clay from the earth” — not soul, for the soul came from the breath — “and man became a living soul.” Who? Surely the one made of clay. “And God placed man in paradise”: what he formed, not what he breathed; he who is now flesh, not he who is soul.

If this is so, with what face will you claim the title of perfect goodness for one whose goodness has failed not merely in a particular part of the man to be freed but in what belongs to him as a whole? If that is full grace and solid mercy which saves the soul alone, this present life gives more, which we enjoy whole and entire. Besides, to rise in part will be to be penalized, not freed. This too belonged to perfect goodness: that man, once freed into faith in the supremely good god, should at once be taken out of the dwelling and dominion of the fierce god. But as it is, O Marcionite, the pain of your flesh brings forth for you both little fevers and all the other thistles and thorns; and exposed not only to the Creator's thunderbolts, wars, plagues, and other blows but even to his scorpions, in what respect do you think yourself freed from his kingdom, when his flies still walk all over you? If you have been rescued for the future, why not from the present too, so as to be perfectly rescued? Our condition is different: we are with our author, our judge, the offended head of our race. You put forward only a good god; but you cannot show to be perfectly good one by whom you are not perfectly freed.

As regards the question of goodness, we have shown along these lines that it by no means befits God, being neither inborn nor rational nor perfect, but dishonest and unjust and unworthy of the very name of goodness; so that, in so far as it befits a god, it follows that he is no god who is preferred on the strength of such goodness — and not merely such goodness, but goodness alone. For now it is right to discuss this too: whether God is to be reckoned by goodness alone, the other attendant feelings and affections being denied — which the Marcionites drive away from their god onto the Creator. We, however, acknowledge them in the Creator as worthy of God, and on this ground too we shall deny that he is God in whom not everything worthy of God is found. If he aimed to entitle with the name of Christ some god of Epicurus's school — such that “what is blessed and incorruptible causes trouble neither to itself nor to another” (for Marcion, chewing over this maxim, removed from him all severity and judicial power) — he ought either to have conceived a god wholly unmoved and insensible (and then what has he to do with Christ, who was troublesome to the Jews by his teaching and to himself by his suffering?), or else to have acknowledged him in the other emotions too (and then what has he to do with Epicurus, who is of no use either to him or to Christians?).

For see: by the very fact that he who before was quiet, who meanwhile did not trouble to make himself known by any work, after so long an age has been moved for man's salvation — surely by an act of will — was he not then shaken by a new will, so that he appears subject to the other emotions as well? For what will is there without the spur of desire? And care too will attend will. For who will will something and desire it and not care about it? Since, then, he both willed and desired man's salvation, he has already made trouble both for himself and for others, against the wishes of Epicurus, Marcion's counsellor. For he has also set up an adversary for himself: that very thing against which he willed, desired, and cared — whether sin or death — and above all their arbiter and man's lord, the Creator. Moreover, nothing will proceed without rivalry that does not proceed without an adversary. In short, in willing, desiring, and caring to set man free, he is by that very fact already a rival both of the one from whom he frees him — freeing him, of course, for himself against him — and of the things from which he frees him, freeing him for other things. So rivalry must be attended by its officers against what it rivals: anger, discord, hatred, disdain, indignation, bile, ill will, offence. If all these attend rivalry, and rivalry works to free man, and the freeing of man is the work of goodness, that goodness cannot exist without its endowments — that is, without the feelings and affections through which it is carried on against the Creator — lest in this way too it be ruled irrational, if it lacks the feelings and affections that are its due. These things we shall defend much more fully in the Creator's case, where they are also made a reproach against him.

But here it is enough to show that the god is most perverse in the very proclamation of his solitary goodness, for which they refuse to ascribe to him such movements of mind as they censure in the Creator. For if he neither rivals nor is angry nor condemns nor afflicts, since he does not even act as judge, I do not see how any system of moral rules can hold for him — and a fuller one at that. For how can it be that he lays down precepts he will not enforce, forbids sins he will not punish, because he will not judge, being a stranger, of course, to all feelings of severity and punishment? Why does he forbid the doing of what he does not avenge when done, when it would have been much more right not to forbid what he was not going to avenge than not to avenge what he had forbidden? Indeed he ought to have permitted it outright, since he would forbid without cause, not meaning to avenge. For even now what is forbidden without punishment is tacitly permitted. And surely he forbids the doing only of what he does not like to be done. He is utterly stupid, then, who is not offended by the doing of what he does not like to be done, since offence is the companion of frustrated will. Or if he is offended, he must be angry; if he is angry, he must avenge. For vengeance is the fruit of anger, anger the due of offence, and offence, as I said, the companion of frustrated will. But he does not avenge; therefore neither is he offended; if he is not offended, then neither is his will injured when what he did not will to be done is done; and sin is then done in accordance with his will, since what does not injure the will is not done against the will.

Or if it is to be the part of divine virtue or goodness to be unwilling that a thing be done and to forbid it, yet not to be moved if it is done, we reply that he was already moved who was unwilling, and that it is idle for him not to be moved at the deed who was moved against its being done, when he did not will that it be done; for by being unwilling he forbade it. And did he not also judge, in being unwilling that it be done and therefore forbidding it? For he judged that it should not be done, and by forbidding he pronounced it. So he too already judges. If it is unworthy of God to judge — or if it is worthy of God to judge only so far as merely to be unwilling and to forbid, not also to avenge what is done — yet nothing is so unworthy of God as not to carry out what he was unwilling and forbade to be done. First, because he owes to any sentence and law of his a sanction, for its authority and to make obedience necessary. Second, because what he was unwilling to have done, and by being unwilling forbade, must be the rival of the good; and it is more unworthy of God to spare evil than to punish it — above all for the supremely good God, who is not plainly good in any other way than as the rival of evil, so that he exercises his love of good by hatred of evil and fulfils his protection of good by overthrowing evil.

“But he plainly judges evil by being unwilling, and condemns it by forbidding; he lets it go, however, by not avenging, and acquits it by not punishing.” O god, betrayer of truth, cheat of his own sentence! He is afraid to condemn what he condemns, afraid to hate what he does not love; he allows to be done what he does not allow to be done; he prefers to show what he does not want rather than to prove it. This will be an imaginary goodness, a discipline that is itself a phantom, perfunctory precepts, carefree sins. Hear, you sinners — and you who are not yet such, so that you may become so: a better god has been found, who is neither offended nor angry nor avenges; for whom no fire is cooked up in Gehenna, for whom no gnashing of teeth shudders in the outer darkness: he is only good. In short, he forbids sinning — but only in writing. It is up to you whether you choose to put your signature to obedience to him, so that you may seem to have paid honour to God; for he does not want fear. And so the Marcionites openly profess that they do not fear their god at all. “For a bad god,” they say, “will be feared, but a good one loved.” Fool, do you say that one whom you call Lord is not to be feared, when this is a name of power, and of power to be feared? And how will you love unless you fear not to love? Plainly he is neither your father, to whom both love for dutiful affection and fear for his power are due, nor your lawful master, so that you love him for his kindness and fear him for his discipline. It is kidnappers who are loved like that, and not feared as well. For only a just and regular dominion will be feared; an adulterous one can be loved, since it rests on seduction, not authority, on flattery, not power. And what is more flattering than not to punish sins?

Come then, you who do not fear God because he is good: why do you not boil over into every lust — the highest fruit of life, as far as I know, for all who do not fear God? Why do you not frequent the solemn pleasures of the raving circus, the savage arena, and the lascivious stage? Why, in persecutions too, when the incense box is held out, do you not at once gain your life by denial? “Far be it,” you say, “far be it!” Then you already fear sin, and by fearing it you have proved that he is feared who forbids sin. Unless, by the same perversity as your god's, you keep what you do not fear, just as he forbids what he does not avenge. It is still more foolish when, asked what will become of every sinner on that day, they answer that he will be cast away. Cast away where? If out of sight, is not this too done by a judgment? For he is judged fit to be cast away — and surely by a judgment of condemnation; unless the sinner is cast away for salvation, so that this too may suit the supremely good god! And what will being cast away be, but losing what he would have obtained if he had not been cast away — that is, salvation? So he will be cast away to the loss of salvation; and this cannot be decreed except by one who is angry and offended and punishes sin — that is, by a judge.

And what is the end of that castaway? “He will be seized,” they say, “by the Creator's fire.” Has their god, then, no element provided even for this purpose, by which he might banish his sinners, even without cruelty, rather than hand them over to the Creator? And what will the Creator do then? I suppose he will prepare them a Gehenna with extra sulphur, as for his blasphemers — unless perhaps, being a jealous God, he spares those who desert his adversary. O god perverse at every point, everywhere irrational, empty in everything, and so no one at all! I see neither his state nor his condition nor his nature nor any order in him hold together — no, not even the very sacrament of his faith. For to what purpose does he too require baptism? If it is the remission of sins, how will he be seen to remit sins who is not seen to retain them? For if he retained them, he would judge. If it is release from death, how will he release from death who did not bind to death? For he would have condemned, if he had bound from the beginning. If it is man's regeneration, how does he regenerate who did not generate? For doing again does not suit one by whom a thing was not done even once. If it is the obtaining of the Holy Spirit, how will he grant the Spirit who did not first give the soul? For the Spirit is in a sense the complement of the soul. So he seals a man who has never been unsealed with him, washes a man who has never been defiled with him; and into this whole sacrament of salvation he plunges flesh that has no share in salvation? Not even a farmer will water land that will yield no fruit — unless he is as foolish as Marcion's god. Accordingly, when he lays on the weakest or most unworthy flesh so great a holiness, whether as burden or as glory, why does he either burden it when it is weak or adorn it when it is unworthy? Why does he not reward with salvation what he burdens or adorns? Why does he cheat it of the wages of its work, not repaying the flesh with salvation? Why does he even let the honour of holiness die in it?

And what shall I say of the emptiness of his discipline, by which he sanctifies a substance that is holy already? With him the flesh is not baptized unless it is a virgin, a widow, or celibate, or has purchased baptism by divorce — as though even eunuchs were not born of marriage. Without doubt this rule will rest on the condemnation of marriage. Let us see whether it is just — not as though we meant to destroy the happiness of holiness, like certain Nicolaitans, champions of lust and luxury, but as those who know holiness without condemning marriage, and pursue it and prefer it, not as good over evil but as better over good. For we do not throw marriage away but lay it aside; we do not prescribe holiness but advise it, keeping both the good and the better, each pursuing them as he has strength; and we defend marriage openly only when it is attacked with hostility as filth, so as to destroy the Creator, who blessed marriage, as befits the honourable thing it is, for the increase of the human race, just as he blessed the whole of creation for sound and good uses. Foods will not be condemned because, sought out too elaborately, they give people over to gluttony; nor will clothes be accused because, bought too expensively, they swell into vanity. So neither will the things of marriage be spat upon because, poured out too intemperately, they flare into lust. There is a great difference between cause and fault, between a state and its excess. So it is not the institution of such things that must be rejected but their going off course, according to the judgment of their very institutor, who said both “Increase and multiply” and “You shall not commit adultery” and “You shall not covet your neighbour's wife,” and who punishes with death both incest and the sacrilegious and monstrous madness of lust toward males and toward beasts.

And even if a limit is now set to marrying — which among us, indeed, a spiritual reason defends on the authority of the Paraclete, prescribing one marriage in the faith — it will belong to the same one to fix the limit who once let it spread; he will gather who scattered; he will cut down the forest who planted it; he will reap the crop who sowed it; he will say, “It remains that those who have wives be as though they had none,” who also said long ago, “Increase and multiply”: the end belongs to him to whom the beginning also belonged. Yet the forest is not cut down as deserving blame, nor the crop reaped as deserving condemnation, but as obedient to its season. So too the business of marriage admits the axe and sickle of holiness not as evil but as ripe to be finished, as kept in reserve for holiness itself, to which, by giving way, it would give being.

Hence I will now say that Marcion's god, when he rejects marriage as evil and a traffic in unchastity, acts against the very holiness he seems to favour. For he roots out its material: if there are no marriages, there is no holiness. The witness of abstinence is void when the freedom to do otherwise is taken away, since certain things are proved by their opposites. Just as power is made perfect in weakness, so abstinence from marrying is recognized where marrying is possible. Who, in short, will be called abstinent when that from which one must abstain is taken away? What temperance in eating is there in famine? What rejection of ambition in poverty? What bridling of lust in castration? And further, to check completely the sowing of the human race — I doubt whether this too befits the supremely good god. For how will he want man saved whom he forbids to be born, by taking away that by which he is born? How will he have anyone on whom to set the seal of his goodness, when he does not allow him to exist? How will he love one whose origin he does not love? Perhaps he fears an overflow of offspring, lest he should have to toil at freeing more, lest he should make many heretics, lest he should have Marcionites of nobler birth, born of Marcionites. Will not the harshness of Pharaoh, the killer of newborns, be more humane? For he takes lives away, this one does not give them; he removes from life, this one does not admit to life. As to homicide there is no difference between them: under both a human being is killed — under the one already born, under the other yet to be born. You would owe gratitude, O heretic god, if you existed, to the Creator's arrangement in uniting male and female; for surely your Marcion too was born of marriage.

Enough of this concerning Marcion's god, whom both the definitions of the one divinity and the conditions of its states confirm not to exist at all. But the course of the whole work will lead to this conclusion too. So if anyone thinks we have done too little, let him expect that it has been kept for its own time — as has the examination of the very Scriptures that Marcion uses.

The occasion for revising this work — what befell it I explained in the preface to the first little book — has also brought us this: that, in dealing with the two gods against Marcion, we give each its own title and volume according to the division of the material, defining the one as not existing at all and defending the other as worthily God, since it has pleased the man of Pontus to bring in the one and exclude the other. For he could not build his lie without demolishing the truth; he had to undermine one thing in order to build what he wanted. So builds the man who has no materials of his own. But the dispute ought to have concerned this alone: that the god who is set above the Creator is no one; so that, once the false god had been driven off by sure rules prescribing a divinity both unique and perfect, there would be no further question about the true God. As surely as it was established that he exists — and so too while it is not established that another exists — it would befit us to hold him without controversy, of whatever kind he is: to be adored rather than judged, to be won over rather than discussed. For what is more necessary for man than care for the true God, upon whom, so to speak, he had fallen, since there was no other god?

But as it is, the almighty God, the Lord and Founder of the universe, is put on trial — for this reason alone, I think: that he has been known from the beginning, that he has never lain hidden, that he has always shone forth, even before Romulus himself, let alone before Tiberius — except that he is unknown to the heretics alone, who put him on trial. They suppose that another god must be presumed for this reason: that they can more easily censure than deny the one who plainly exists, weighing God by the judgment of their own mind; just as if some blind man, or one with swimming eyes, wanted to presume another sun, milder and healthier, because he does not see the one he sees. There is one sun, O man, which tempers this world: even when you do not think so, it is excellent and useful; and when it seems to you harsher and more hostile, or even dirtier and more corrupting, it is still true to its own reason. If you cannot perceive that reason, you could not have borne the rays of any other sun either, had there been one — and surely a greater one. For if you are blind toward the lower god, what would you be toward the higher? Why not rather spare your weakness and not stretch yourself into danger, since you have a God certain and undoubted, and by this very fact sufficiently seen, once you have first perceived this: that he is one whom you do not know except in part, the part in which he himself willed to be known?

But you do not deny God, as though you knew him; you discuss him, as not knowing him; indeed you even accuse him, as though you knew him — whom, if you knew him, you would not accuse, nor even discuss. Giving him the name, you deny the substance of the name, that is, the greatness, not acknowledging it to be as great as it is; for if man could have known it in every respect, it would not be greatness. Isaiah himself, already then foreseeing heretical hearts, says: “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor? Or with whom did he take counsel, or who showed him the way of understanding and knowledge?” And the apostle agrees with him: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom of God! How unsearchable are his judgments” — surely of God as judge — “and his ways past finding out” — surely the ways of understanding and knowledge, which no one showed him; unless perhaps these censors of divinity did, who say, “God ought not to have done so,” and “He ought rather to have done so” — as though anyone knew what is in God except the Spirit of God. But having the spirit of the world, not recognizing God through wisdom in the wisdom of God, they think themselves better counsellors than God; since, as the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, so the wisdom of God is foolishness with the world. But we know that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God stronger than men. And so God is greatest when to man he is small, best when to man he is not good, most one when to man he is two or more.

But if from the beginning man, being natural and not receiving the things of the Spirit, thought God's law foolishness, so that he neglected to keep it, and therefore, having no faith, even what he seemed to have was taken from him — the grace of paradise and familiarity with God, through which he would have known all the things of God, had he obeyed — what wonder if, returned to his own material and banished to the workhouse of tilling the earth, bent and stooping toward the earth in that very labour, he passed on to his whole race the spirit of the world taken from it, a race natural, that is, and heretical, not receiving the things of God? Or who will hesitate to call that very sin of Adam a heresy, since he committed it by choosing his own opinion rather than God's? Except that Adam never said to his potter, “You have not shaped me wisely.” He confessed that he had been led astray; he did not hide the one who led him astray. He was a very raw heretic. He disobeyed, yet he did not blaspheme his Creator nor censure his author, whom from his own beginning he had found good and excellent, and whom he himself, if you like, had made his judge.

In entering, then, on the examination of the known God, if it is asked in what condition he is known, we must begin from his works, which are prior to man, so that his goodness — discovered at once along with him, and thereafter established and laid down — may suggest to us some sense of how to understand the way the subsequent ordering of things turned out. And Marcion's disciples, recognizing the goodness of our God, can also acknowledge it as worthy of God under the same headings under which we showed it unworthy in their god. First, this very point: the material for his being acknowledged he did not find in another's possession, but made for himself out of his own. The first goodness of the Creator, then, is that by which God did not will to lie hidden forever — that is, that there should be nothing by which God might be known. For what is so good as the knowledge and enjoyment of God? For even though it did not yet appear that this was good, since there was not yet anything to which it could appear, yet God foreknew what good would appear, and therefore entrusted it to his supreme goodness, as the agent of the good that was to appear — a goodness surely not sudden, nor of an accidental or provoked impulse, as though it were to be reckoned from the moment it began to work. For if it itself set the beginning from the moment it began to work, it had no beginning itself when it made the beginning. And once the beginning had been made by it, from it was born the reckoning of times as well, for distinguishing and marking which the stars and heavenly lights were set in order: “For they shall be,” it says, “for times and months and years.” So it had no time before time, since it made time, just as it had no beginning before the beginning, since it established the beginning. And so, lacking both the order of a beginning and the measure of time, it will be reckoned of an immeasurable and endless age, and cannot be thought sudden or accidental or provoked, having nothing from which to be so reckoned — that is, any kind of time. It must be presumed eternal, inborn in God and perpetual, and therefore worthy of God; and from this point it puts to shame the goodness of Marcion's god, which is later, I do not say than beginnings and times, but than the very malice of the Creator — if indeed malice could have been produced by goodness.

When, then, the goodness of God had provided man for knowing God, it added this too to its praise: that it first devised a dwelling for man, a very great structure, and afterwards a greater one, so that in a great dwelling, as in a lesser, he might practise and advance, and so be promoted from God's good, that is, the great, to his best, that is, the greater dwelling. For this good work it employs also the best of ministers, his Word: “My heart,” he says, “has poured forth the best word.” Let Marcion recognize from this the first best fruit — of the best tree, surely. The most ignorant of peasants has grafted a bad tree onto the good. But the shoot of blasphemy will not thrive; it will wither with its gardener, and so the nature of the good tree will bear witness to itself. Look, in sum, at what fruit the Word has borne: “And God said, Let it be, and it was made; and God saw that it was good” — not as though he did not know it was good until he saw it, but because it was good he looked on it, honouring, sealing, and approving the goodness of his works by the favour of his gaze. So too he blessed what he made well, so that the whole God might be commended to you, good both in speaking and in doing. The Word did not yet know how to speak ill, because it did not yet know how to do ill. We shall see the causes that required even this of God. Meanwhile the world consisted of good things only, showing plainly in advance how much good was being prepared for him for whom all this was being prepared.

Who, in short, was worthy to inhabit God's works but his own image and likeness? This too goodness wrought, and indeed more actively: not by a word of command but by a familiar hand, with even a coaxing word sent first: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” Goodness spoke; goodness formed from clay so great a substance of flesh, built out of one material with so many qualities; goodness breathed into him a soul, not dead but living; goodness set him over all things, to enjoy and to rule them, even to name them; goodness went further and added delights for man, so that, though possessing the whole world, he might dwell in its pleasanter part, being moved into paradise — even then from the world into the church. The same goodness provided a helper too, so that nothing might be less than good: “For it is not good,” it says, “for the man to be alone.” It knew that the sex of Mary, and afterwards of the church, would be of benefit to him. And even the law which you blame, which you twist into controversies, goodness imposed, taking thought for man so that he might cleave to God and not seem so much free as cast off, placed on a level with his servants, the other animals, which are left loose by God and free out of disdain; but so that man alone might glory that he alone had been worthy to receive a law from God, and that, as a rational animal, capable of understanding and knowledge, he might be held within a rational freedom too, subject to him who had subjected all things to him. And goodness likewise added counsel for keeping this law: “On the day you eat, you shall die the death.” For most kindly it showed the outcome of transgression, lest ignorance of the danger should encourage neglect of obedience. Further, if there was reason for imposing the law, there followed also reason for keeping it, so that a penalty was attached to transgression — a penalty which he who foretold it nevertheless did not want to come about. Recognize, then, the goodness of our God, for the present at least up to this point, from his good works, his good blessings, his indulgences, his providences, and his good and kindly laws and warnings.

From here, then, on to all the questions — you dogs, whom the apostle drives outside, barking at the God of truth. These are the bones of argument you gnaw: “If God is good, and foreknows the future, and has power to avert evil, why did he allow man — his own image and likeness, indeed his own substance, by the origin of the soul — to fall away from obedience to the law into death, circumvented by the devil? For if he were good, and so unwilling that such a thing should happen, and foreknowing, and so not ignorant that it would happen, and powerful, and so able to prevent it, what could not happen under these three conditions of divine majesty would in no way have happened. But if it did happen, the contrary is settled: God is to be believed neither good nor foreknowing nor powerful. For in so far as nothing of the kind would have happened if God were such — that is, good, foreknowing, and powerful — to that extent it happened because God is not such.”

To this we must first defend in the Creator the attributes that are called into doubt: I mean goodness, foreknowledge, and power. And I shall not linger on this point, since Christ himself goes before us with the rule that proof is to be undertaken from works. The Creator's works testify to both his goodness, in that they are good, as we have shown, and his power, in that they are so great, and made moreover out of nothing. For even if they were made out of some matter, as some will have it, even so they were made out of nothing, since they were not what they are. In short, they are great in this way, by being good; and God is powerful in this way, in that all things are his — which is why he is called almighty. And what shall I say of his foreknowledge, which has as many witnesses as it has made prophets? Yet what need is there to claim foreknowledge for the author of all things, who surely foreknew all things by arranging them and arranged them by foreknowing them? Certainly he foreknew the transgression itself; had he not foreknown it, he would not have enjoined caution against it under fear of death.

If, then, these faculties were in God, on account of which no evil either could or should have befallen man, and it nevertheless befell him, let us look also at man's condition, to see whether it happened rather through it, since it could not have happened through God. I find that man was established by God free, master of his own choice and his own power; and I observe no image and likeness of God in him more than the form of such a state. For it is not by his face and bodily features, so varied in the human race, that he was modelled on the God who is uniform; but in that substance which he drew from God himself, that is, the soul, answering to the form of God, he was stamped with the freedom and power of his own choice. This state of his was confirmed by the very law that God then laid down. For a law would not be laid down for one who did not have in his power the obedience due to the law; nor again would the threat of death be attached to transgression, if contempt of the law were not also reckoned to man as lying within the freedom of his choice. So too you will find in the Creator's later laws, as he sets before man good and evil, life and death. Nor would the whole order of discipline have been arranged through precepts, with God calling, threatening, and exhorting, except for man, free and willing both to obey and to despise.

But since it is already understood from this that we are building up man's free power of choice for this purpose — that what befell him should be laid at his own door and not at God's — lest you too object at this point that he ought not to have been so made, if the freedom and power of choice were going to prove fatal, I shall first defend this too: that he ought to have been so made; so that I may the more strongly commend both that he was so made and that he was made in a manner worthy of God, by showing the higher cause that led to his being made so. God's goodness and his reason will support this arrangement too, being in agreement in everything with our God. For neither is reason reason without goodness, nor goodness goodness without reason — except perhaps with Marcion's god, who is irrationally good, as we have shown. It was necessary that God be known: this surely is good and rational. It was necessary that there be something worthy to know God: what could be provided so worthy as the image and likeness of God? This too is without doubt good and rational. It was necessary, then, that the image and likeness of God be established with free choice and power of its own, so that this very thing — the freedom and power of choice — might be reckoned the image and likeness of God in it. To this end that substance was fitted to man which would be of this state: the breath of God, which is surely free and in its own power. And besides, how could it be that man, possessing the whole world, should not reign first of all in the possession of his own mind — lord of others, slave of himself?

You may recognize, then, God's goodness from his condescension and his reason from his arrangement. Let goodness alone now be credited with bestowing so much on man — that is, freedom of choice; let reason claim for itself the other part — the manner of establishing it. For God alone is good by nature. For he who has what he is without beginning has it not by being established but by nature. But man, who exists wholly by being established and who has a beginning, received with his beginning the form in which he was to exist; and so he was disposed to good not by nature but by establishment, not having it as his own to be good, since he was disposed to good not by nature but by establishment, according to the good one who established him, namely the maker of good things. So that man might then have the good as his own, emancipated to him by God, and that the good might become man's property and in a way his nature, there was assigned to him at his establishment — as a kind of scale-holder at the emancipation of the good from God — freedom and power of choice. This would cause the good to be performed by man spontaneously, as now his own, since the reason of goodness also required this: that it be exercised voluntarily, that is, out of freedom of choice, not favouring its establishment, not serving it. So man would at last be established as good if he were found good according to his establishment indeed, but now by his own will, as though by a property of nature; and likewise so that against evil too — for God certainly foresaw that as well — man might hold out the stronger, being free and in his own power. For if he lacked this right, so that he did even good not by will but by necessity, he would also be open to seizure by evil through the weakness of servitude, a slave to evil just as to good. So complete freedom of choice in both directions was granted him, so that as master of himself he might steadily meet both, freely keeping the good and freely avoiding the evil; since in any case it was necessary that man, placed under God's judgment, should make that judgment just by the merits of his own choice — a free choice, that is. Otherwise neither the reward of good nor that of evil could justly be weighed out to one who had been found good or evil by necessity and not by will. For this purpose the law too was established, not excluding but proving freedom, through obedience freely rendered or transgression freely committed. So freedom of choice lay open to either outcome.

If, then, both God's goodness and his reason are found in the freedom of choice granted to man, we must not set aside the first definition of goodness and reason, which must be established before any discussion, and prejudge from what happened afterwards that God ought not to have made man so, because things turned out otherwise than befitted God. Rather, having discerned that he ought to have made him so, we must examine the rest with that discernment kept intact. It is easy, however, for those who stumble at once at man's fall, before they have looked into his condition, to charge the author with what happened, because they have not examined the author's reason either. In short, God's goodness, observed from the beginning of his works, will persuade us that no evil could have come from God; and man's freedom, when reconsidered, will show that it is itself guilty of what it committed.

By this definition everything is kept safe for God: the nature of his goodness, the reason of his arrangement, and the fullness of his foreknowledge and power. You ought, however, to require of God also the utmost steadfastness and pre-eminent faithfulness in every arrangement he makes, so that you stop asking whether anything could have happened against God's will. For if you hold fast to God's steadfastness and faithfulness, which must be upheld by his good and rational arrangements, you will not be surprised either that God did not intervene against what he did not want to happen, in order to preserve what he did want. For if he had once granted man freedom and power of choice, and granted them worthily, as we have shown, he had surely granted them to be enjoyed, by the very authority of the arrangement — to be enjoyed, as far as it rested with him, according to himself, that is, according to God, that is, toward good (for who will allow anything against himself?); but as far as it rested with man, according to the movements of his own freedom (for who, having once granted someone the enjoyment of a thing, does not grant him to enjoy it according to his own mind and choice?). It followed, then, that God should stand back from the freedom he had once granted man — that is, keep within himself both his foreknowledge and his superior power, through which he could have intervened to prevent man, setting out to use his freedom badly, from falling into danger. For if he had intervened, he would have rescinded the freedom of choice that he had granted in reason and goodness.

In short, suppose he had intervened; suppose he had rescinded the freedom of choice, calling man back from the tree and keeping the cheating serpent itself from meeting the woman: would not Marcion exclaim, “O futile, unstable, faithless lord, rescinding what he has established! Why had he granted free choice, if he intervenes? Why does he intervene, if he granted it?” Let him choose where to brand himself with error: in the establishing or in the rescinding. Would he not then have seemed the more deceived through lack of foreknowledge of the future, if he had stood in the way? And who would not have said that he had granted it as though not knowing how it would turn out? But even if he foreknew that man would use what he had been given badly, what is so worthy of God as steadfastness, as faithfulness to his arrangements, whatever they are? It was for man to see to it, if he did not rightly discharge what he had rightly received. He himself would be guilty before the law he refused to obey — not God. Or should the lawgiver himself cheat his own law by not allowing what it prescribed to be fulfilled? These speeches, which you would most fittingly have made against the Creator if he had obstructed man's free will out of the providence and power you demand, now whisper to yourself on the Creator's behalf: that he showed steadfastness and faithfulness in his arrangements, as being both rational and good.

For he had brought man forward only as far as living, not as far as living rightly — with regard, that is, to God and his law. So he himself had granted him to live, making him a living soul; but living rightly he had laid upon him as a charge, admonishing him to obey the law. Thus he who even now desires man restored to life, preferring the sinner's repentance to his death, proves that man was not established for death. As, then, God brought upon man a state of life, so man drew upon himself a state of death — and this not through weakness, any more than through ignorance, so that nothing might be imputed to the author. For although it was an angel who seduced him, yet the one seduced was free and in his own power; although it was an angel, yet the image and likeness of God was stronger than an angel; although it was an angel, yet the breath of God was nobler than the material spirit of which the angels consist — “who makes,” it says, “his angels spirits and his attendants a flame of fire” — since he would not have subjected the universe to man if man were too weak to rule it and not superior to the angels, to whom he subjected nothing of the kind. So neither would he have laid the weight of the law — if the law is heavy — on one too weak to bear it, nor have confronted with the sentence of death one whom he knew to be excusable on the ground of weakness. Finally, he would have made him weak not by the freedom and power of choice but rather by the lack of them. And indeed the same man, the same substance of soul, the same state as Adam's, the same freedom and power of choice makes a man victor today over the same devil, when it is exercised in obedience to the laws of God.

“Yet in any case,” you say, “the Creator's substance is found capable of sin, since the breath of God, that is, the soul, sinned in man, and the corruption of the portion cannot but be referred back to the original whole.” To answer this we must explain the nature of the soul. First of all we must hold to what the Greek Scripture marked in calling it “breath,” not “spirit.” For some who translate from the Greek, not reflecting on the difference or caring about the proper meaning of words, put “spirit” for “breath,” and so give the heretics occasion to stain the Spirit of God with sin, that is, God himself. And the question has already been seized upon. Understand, then, that breath is less than spirit, a little breeze from it, as it were; and though it comes from the spirit, it is not spirit. For a breeze too is thinner than wind, and though the breeze comes from the wind, it is not wind. One may even call the breath the image of the spirit. For this is why man is the image of God, that is, of spirit — for God is spirit. The breath, then, is the image of the spirit. Further, an image will not be equal to the reality in every respect. For it is one thing to be according to the reality, another to be the reality itself. So the breath too, being the image of the spirit, cannot so match the image of God that, because the reality — that is, the spirit, that is, God — is without sin, therefore the image — that is, the breath, that is, man — could not have committed sin. In this the image will be less than the reality and the breath inferior to the spirit: it has indeed those lineaments of God, in that it is immortal, free and master of its own choice, often foreknowing, rational, capable of understanding and knowledge; yet even in these it is an image and does not reach to the very power of divinity; and so neither does it reach to perfect freedom from sin, for this belongs to God alone, that is, to the reality, and this alone is not allowed to the image. For just as an image, though it expresses all the lineaments of the reality, yet lacks its very power, having no motion, so the soul, the image of the spirit, could not express its power alone, that is, the happiness of not sinning. Otherwise it would not be soul but spirit, and he who received a soul would not be man but God.

And besides, not everything that is God's will be held to be God, so that you should demand that his breath too be God, that is, free from sin, because it is God's breath. Nor would you, if you blew into a flute, make the flute a man, though you blew from your own soul — as God too blew from his own spirit. In short, since Scripture plainly says that God breathed into man's face and man became a living soul, not a life-giving spirit, it separated the soul from the condition of its maker. For the work must necessarily be other than the craftsman, that is, inferior to the craftsman. A pitcher made by a potter will not itself be a potter; so neither will the breath made by the spirit therefore be spirit. The very fact that the breath has been called soul — see whether it has not passed even from the condition of breath into some lesser quality. “So,” you say, “you have given the soul the weakness you denied above.” Clearly, when you require it to be equal to God, that is, immune from sin, I say it is weak; but when it is compared with an angel, I must defend it as stronger — the lord of the universe, whom angels now serve, who will even judge angels, if it stands firm in God's law, which at the beginning it refused to do. This very thing, then, the breath of God could commit: it could, but it ought not. It was able to, through the thinness of its substance, as being breath, not spirit; it was bound not to, through the power of choice, as being free, not a slave; and there was the further warning against sinning under threat of death, by which the thinness of its substance might be propped up and the freedom of its decision guided. So the soul cannot now be seen to have sinned through what it has akin to God, that is, through the breath, but through what was added to its substance, that is, free choice — granted indeed by God with reason, but driven by man wherever he wished. If this is so, God's whole arrangement is cleared of the reproach of evil. For freedom of choice will cast its fault back not on the one by whom it was given but on the one by whom it was not managed as it should have been. What evil, in short, will you charge to the Creator? If man's sin — what is man's will not be God's, nor is he to be held the author of sin who is found to be its forbidder, indeed its condemner. If death is an evil, death too will bring odium not on the one who threatened it but on the one who despised it, as its author. For by despising it he made it — and it would surely not have come about had he not despised.

But suppose you transfer the indictment of evil from man to the devil, as the instigator of sin, so as to direct the blame in this way too at the Creator as the devil's author — “who makes his angels spirits.” Then what was made by God, that is, an angel, will belong to him who made it; but what was not made by God, that is, the devil — that is, the accuser — it remains that he made himself, by bringing an accusation against God, and a false one: first, that God had forbidden them to eat of every tree; then, as though they would not die if they ate; third, as though God had grudged them divinity. Where, then, did the malice of lying and deceiving men and of slandering God come from? Certainly not from God, who established this angel too as good, after the pattern of his good works. Indeed he is proclaimed the wisest of all before he became the devil — unless wisdom is an evil. And if you unroll the prophecy of Ezekiel, you will easily see that that angel was both good by his establishment and corrupted of his own accord. For in the person of the prince of Tyre it is said of the devil: “And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, take up a lament over the prince of Tyre, and say: Thus says the Lord: You are the seal of the likeness” — he, that is, who broke the seal on the integrity of the image and likeness — “a crown of beauty” — this as to the most eminent of angels, an archangel, the wisest of all — “in the delights of the paradise of your God you were born” — for it was there that God had made the angels, in the second formation of the shapes of living creatures — “you were clothed with the finest stone: sardius, topaz, emerald, carbuncle, sapphire, jasper, ligure, agate, amethyst, chrysolite, beryl, onyx; and you filled your storehouses and your treasuries with gold. From the day you were created, when I set you with the cherub on the holy mountain of God, you were in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your days, from the day you were created, until your wounds were found; from the abundance of your trading you filled your storerooms, and you sinned,” and so on.

These words plainly belong to the rebuke of the angel, not properly to that prince; for no human being was born in the paradise of God, not even Adam himself, who was rather moved there; nor was any man set with the cherub on the holy mountain of God, that is, in the heavenly heights, from which the Lord too testifies that Satan fell; nor did he dwell among the stones of fire, among the jewelled rays of the burning stars, from which Satan was cast down like lightning. It was the very author of sin who was being pointed out in the person of a sinful man: once blameless from the day of his creation, created by God for good, as by the good creator of blameless creatures, adorned with all angelic glory and placed with God, the good with the good; but afterwards turned by himself to evil. “From the time,” it says, “your wounds appeared” — imputing to him, of course, those wounds with which he wounded man and led him away from obedience to God. And he sinned from the time he sowed sin, and so thereafter carried on the abundance of his trading, that is, of his malice — the tally of sins, namely — he too having been established, as a spirit, with free choice no less. For God would have ordered nothing close to himself without freedom of this kind. Yet by condemning him beforehand God testified that he had gone off course from the form of his establishment through the lust of a malice conceived of his own accord; and by measuring out a period of leave for his operations he carried out the reason of his goodness, postponing the devil's destruction by the same counsel as man's restoration. For he gave room for a contest, so that man, by the same freedom of choice by which he had fallen to the enemy, might crush him, proving that the fault was his own and not God's, and so might worthily recover salvation through victory; and that the devil might be punished more bitterly, defeated by the one he had crushed before; and that God might be found so much the more good, waiting for man to return more glorious to paradise, now from life, with leave to pluck the tree of life.

So until man's sin God was from the beginning only good; from then on a judge, and severe, and — as the Marcionites will have it — cruel. At once the woman is condemned to give birth in pain and to serve her husband — she who before had heard, without any sorrow, by way of blessing, of the increase of the race: “Only increase and multiply”; she who had been destined to be a helper to the man, not his servant. At once the earth too is cursed — but before it was blessed. At once thistles and thorns — but before grass and herbs and fruitful trees. At once sweat and toil for bread — but before, food from every tree free of labour and nourishment without care. From then on man is bound for the earth — but before he was taken from the earth; from then on for death — but before for life; from then on in garments of skin — but before naked without shame. So God's goodness came first, according to his nature; his severity afterwards, according to the cause. The one is inborn, the other incidental; the one his own, the other adapted; the one put forth, the other applied. For neither ought his nature to have kept his goodness idle, nor ought the cause to have let his severity slip by in silence. The one God displayed for his own sake, the other for the occasion.

Now go on and accuse the judge's state too, as akin to evil — you who dreamed up another god, only good, because you cannot bear a judge; although we have shown that he too is either a judge or, if not a judge, then certainly the perverse and empty founder of a discipline that is not enforced, that is, not judged. But you who reject God as judge, without proving him not to be a judge, will surely have to accuse justice itself, which makes the judge, or else count it among the kinds of malice — that is, list injustice among the titles of goodness. For justice is evil only if injustice is good. Further, when you are compelled to declare injustice among the worst things, you are pressed by the same yoke to reckon justice among the best. For nothing that is the rival of evil is not good, just as nothing that is the rival of good is not evil. So as much as injustice is evil, so much is justice good. And it must be reckoned not merely a kind of goodness but its safeguard; for goodness, unless it is governed by justice so as to be just, will not be goodness, if it is unjust. For nothing unjust is good, and everything just is good.

So if the fellowship and harmony of goodness and justice cannot admit their separation, with what face will you set up the difference of two gods by separating them, reckoning a good god on one side and a just god on the other? Where the good is, there the just stands too. From the beginning, in short, the Creator was just as much as he was good; both went forth together. His goodness wrought the world; his justice regulated it — justice which, even when it judged that the world should be made of good things, judged with the counsel of goodness. It is the work of justice that a separation was pronounced between light and darkness, between day and night, between heaven and earth, between the upper and the lower water, between the gathering of the sea and the mass of dry land, between the greater and the lesser lights, those of day and of night, between male and female, between the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, between the world and paradise, between the animals born of water and those born of earth. As goodness conceived all things, so justice distinguished them. All of this was arranged and ordered by judgment. Every position, condition, effect, motion, state, rising, and setting of each of the elements is a judgment of the Creator — so that you should not think he is to be defined as judge only from the time evil began, and so darken justice with the cause of evil. For in these ways we have shown that justice came forth together with goodness, the author of all things, so that it too is to be reckoned inborn in God and natural, not incidental, since it has been found in the Lord as the arbiter of his works.

But when evil afterwards broke out, and from then on God's goodness began to deal with an adversary, that same justice of God took on another task as well: to direct goodness now in view of the opposition. So, setting aside the freedom by which God is good even unasked, goodness is weighed out according to each one's merits: offered to the worthy, refused to the unworthy, taken away from the ungrateful, and likewise avenged against all its rivals. So this whole work of justice is a management of goodness: in that it condemns by judging, punishes by condemning, and, as you put it, rages, it serves good, surely, not evil. In short, the fear of judgment contributes to good, not to evil. For it was not enough for the good to be commended by itself, now that it was labouring under an adversary. For even if it was commendable by itself, it was not also preservable, being now open to attack by the adversary, unless some power of fear presided, to compel even the unwilling to seek and guard the good. Otherwise, with so many allurements of evil attacking the good, who would seek what he could despise with impunity? Who would guard what he could lose without danger? You have read that the way of evil is broad and far more crowded: would not all slide into it, if nothing were feared on it? We shudder at the Creator's terrible threats, and even so are scarcely torn away from evil. What if he threatened nothing?

Will you call this justice evil, which does not favour evil? Will you deny that it is good, when it provides for the good? What sort of god would you want? What sort would suit the wicked? Under whom would sins rejoice? Whom would the devil mock? Would you judge that god good who could make man worse by making sin safe? Who is the author of good, except one who also requires it? Likewise, who is a stranger to evil, except one who is also its enemy? Who is its enemy, except one who also fights it? Who fights it, except one who also punishes it? So God is wholly good, since he is everything on behalf of the good. So, in short, he is almighty, because he is powerful both to help and to harm. Merely to do good is less, because such a one can do nothing but do good. With what confidence should I hope for good from such a one, if this is all he can do? How should I pursue the reward of innocence, if I do not also keep in view the penalty of guilt? I must distrust him, lest he who was not able to do both should reward neither side. So far is justice the very fullness of divinity, displaying God as perfect, both Father and Lord: Father in clemency, Lord in discipline; Father in gentle power, Lord in severe; Father to be loved dutifully, Lord to be feared necessarily; to be loved because he prefers mercy to sacrifice, to be feared because he does not want sin; to be loved because he prefers the sinner's repentance to his death, to be feared because he does not want sinners who still do not repent. Therefore the law lays down both: “You shall love God,” and “You shall fear God.” The one it set before the obedient, the other before the one who strays.

At every point the same God meets you: striking but also healing, killing but also making alive, humbling but also exalting, creating evils but also making peace — so that here too I may answer the heretics. “See,” they say, “he himself professes to be the creator of evils, when he says: I am he who creates evils.” Seizing on a word that is shared, which by its ambiguity confuses two kinds of evils — since both sins and punishments are called evils — they want him to be understood indiscriminately as the creator of evils, so that he may be declared the author of malice as well. We, however, drawing a distinction between the two forms, and separating the evils of sin from the evils of punishment, the evils of fault from the evils of penalty, assign to each part its own author: of the evils of sin and fault, the devil; of the evils of punishment and penalty, God the Creator; so that the former part is credited to malice and the latter to justice — the justice of a judgment that creates evils against the evils of sin. It is of these evils, then, that the Creator professes to be the author, the evils that befit a judge. They are indeed evils to those on whom they are repaid; but in their own right they are good, as being just, defending the good, and hostile to sins, and in this order worthy of God. Or else prove them unjust, so that you may prove they are to be credited to malice, that is, that they are evils of injustice; for if they belong to justice, they will no longer be evils but goods — evils only to the wicked, by whom even goods are condemned outright as evils.

Establish, then, that it was unjust that man, the willful despiser of the divine law, received in return what he had not wanted to do without; unjust that the malice of that age was struck down by rains, and later by fires; unjust that Egypt, most foul and superstitious, and moreover the oppressor of a people who were its guests, was struck with a tenfold chastisement. He hardens Pharaoh's heart — but the man had deserved to be delivered to destruction, who had already denied God, who had already so often proudly rebuffed his envoys, who had already added to the people's burden of labour; and finally, as an Egyptian, he had long been guilty before God of heathen idolatry, worshipping the ibis and the crocodile sooner than the living God. He gave up even his own people — but they were ungrateful. He sent bears against the boys too — but they were irreverent toward the prophet. The impudence of an age that owed modesty had to be punished.

First, then, look at the judge's justice; if its reason is established, then his severity too, and the means by which his severity runs its course, will be credited to reason and justice. And not to linger over more, plead the causes as well, if you would condemn the sentences; excuse the sins, if you would reject the judgments. Do not censure the judge; convict him of being a bad judge. For even if he exacted the sins of the fathers from the sons, the hardness of the people had compelled such remedies, so that, looking out at least for their descendants, they might obey the divine law. For who does not care more for his children's welfare than for his own? And if the blessing of the fathers was destined for their seed too, without any merit of the seed as yet, why should not the guilt of the fathers overflow onto the sons as well, so that both grace and offence might run through the whole race? — saving what was later to be decreed: that they would no longer say that the fathers had eaten a sour grape and the sons' teeth were set on edge; that is, that the father would not bear the son's sin nor the son the father's, but each would be guilty of his own sin; so that, once the hardness of the people had been tamed by the hardness of the law, justice would then judge not the race but persons. And yet, if you accept the true Gospel, you will learn to whom the sentence of him who repays the fathers' sins on the sons applies: to those, namely, who were of their own accord to call this sentence down on themselves: “His blood be upon our heads and on our children's.” So God's providence decreed for man what it had already heard.

Severity, then, is good because it is just, if the judge is good, that is, just. Likewise the other things are good through which the good work of good severity runs its course, whether anger or jealousy, without cruelty. For all these are owed to severity, as severity is owed to justice. And so the things that belong to a judge cannot be made a reproach to the judge, since they too are without fault, as the judge is. For what if you were to say that there must be a physician, but were to accuse his instruments of cutting and burning and amputating and binding, when a physician cannot exist without the instruments of his art? No — accuse the one who cuts badly, amputates at the wrong time, burns rashly, and so censure his instruments too as bad servants. It is just the same when you admit God as judge but destroy those movements and feelings through which he judges.

We learn about God from the prophets and from Christ, not from the philosophers nor from Epicurus. We who believe that God even lived on earth and took on the humility of human condition for the sake of human salvation are far from the opinion of those who hold that God cares about nothing. It is from there that a definition of this kind has come to the heretics too: “If God is angry and jealous and lifted up and embittered, then he will also be corrupted, then he will also die.” Well, it belongs to Christians to believe even that God died, and yet that he lives for ages of ages. Most foolish are those who prejudge divine things from human, so that, because passions of this kind are held in man to belong to a corruptible condition, they suppose them to be of the same state in God as well. Distinguish the substances and assign them their own feelings, as different as the substances require, though they seem to share names. For we read of God's right hand and eyes and feet, and yet they will not for that reason be compared with human ones because they share a name. As great as the difference will be between the divine body and the human under the same names of members, so great will be the difference between the divine mind and the human, even under the same names of feelings — feelings which the corruptibility of human substance makes corruptible in man, just as the incorruptibility of divine substance makes them incorruptible in God.

You certainly confess the Creator to be God? “Certainly,” you say. How, then, do you suppose anything human in God, and not everything divine? The one you do not deny to be God you confess not to be human, since by confessing him God you have surely prejudged that he differs from every quality of human conditions. Further, since you equally acknowledge that man was breathed by God into a living soul, not God by man, it is quite perverse to set human things in God rather than divine things in man, and to clothe God with man's image rather than man with God's. And so this must be reckoned the image of God in man: that the human mind has the same movements and feelings as God, though not such as God has; for according to their substance both their state and their outcome differ. In short, the opposite feelings — I mean gentleness, patience, mercy, and their very mother, goodness — why do you presume them to be divine? And yet we do not possess them perfectly, because God alone is perfect. So too those other kinds — I mean anger and exasperation — we do not undergo with the same happiness, because God alone is happy, by the property of incorruptibility. He will be angry, but not …; he will be embittered, but not endangered; he will be moved, but not overthrown. He must employ all things for the sake of all things, as many feelings as there are causes: anger because of the wicked, bile because of the ungrateful, jealousy because of the proud, and whatever is to the disadvantage of the wicked; so also mercy because of those who go astray, patience because of those who do not yet look back, generosity because of the deserving, and whatever the good need. All these he undergoes in his own manner, in which it befits him to undergo them — he on whose account man undergoes the same things, equally in his own manner.

These points, thus examined, show that the whole order of God as judge is the worker — and, to put it more worthily, the protector — of that universal and supreme goodness which the Marcionites refuse to acknowledge in the same God, as though it were set apart from judicial feelings and pure in its own state: the God who rains on the good and the evil and makes his sun rise on the just and the unjust — which the other god does not do at all. For although Marcion dared to erase from the gospel this testimony of Christ to the Creator, the world itself is inscribed with it, and it is read by every conscience. And this very patience of the Creator will serve for Marcion's condemnation — that patience which waits for the sinner's repentance rather than his death and prefers mercy to sacrifice; which turned away the destruction already decreed for the Ninevites, granted Hezekiah a span of life for his tears, and restored his kingdom to the tyrant of Babylon when he had repented. I mean that mercy which granted to the people the son of Saul, who was to die because of a vow; which released David with pardon when he confessed his sins against the house of Uriah; and which restored Israel itself as often as it judged it, and cherished it again as often as it rebuked it. Do not, then, look only at the judge; turn also to the examples of the supremely good. As you note when he avenges, consider when he pardons; set his gentleness against his austerity. When you have found both in the Creator, you will find in him also that for which you believe in another god.

Come, finally, to an inspection of his teachings, disciplines, precepts, and counsels. Perhaps you will say that these are also laid down by human laws. But before all the Lycurguses and Solons came Moses and God. There is no later age that does not receive from the first beginnings. At any rate, my Creator did not learn from your god to prescribe: “You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet what is another's, honour father and mother,” and “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” To these principal counsels of innocence and chastity, of justice and piety, are added prescriptions of humanity as well: when every seventh year slaves are set free; when at the same season the land is left alone, making room for the needy; when even the ox that treads out the grain has the bonds of its mouth loosed, for the fruit of its present labour — so that humanity, practised first on animals, might more easily be taught to bring relief to men.

But what good things of the law should I defend rather than those which the heresy has been eager to shake? Such as the rule of retaliation, which demands eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and bruise for bruise. It does not savour of a licence to inflict injury in turn, but looks to restraining violence altogether. To a people most hard and unfaithful toward God it would have seemed a long wait, or even incredible, to expect vindication from God, which was later to be proclaimed through the prophet: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord.” Meanwhile, therefore, the committing of injury was to be checked by fear of a requital that would meet it at once, and the licence to retaliate was to be a prohibition of provocation, so that wickedness might cease, made safe from itself: while the second blow is permitted, the first is deterred, and when the first is deterred, the second is not struck either — since in other respects too the fear of retaliation works more readily through a taste of the same suffering. Nothing is more bitter than to suffer the very thing you have done to others.

And if the law takes something away from food and declares unclean animals that were once blessed, understand the plan of exercising self-control, and recognize the reins put on that gluttony which, while eating the bread of angels, longed for the cucumbers and melons of the Egyptians. Recognize too that provision was made against gluttony's companions, lust and luxury, which generally cool when the belly is disciplined — for “the people ate and drank and rose up to play.” Likewise, so that the craving for money might also be quenched in part, where it pleads the necessity of food, the ambition for costly foods was taken away. Lastly, so that man might more easily be trained to fast for God, he was accustomed to few and unglamorous foods, so as not to go hungry for any of the more luxurious. The Creator is surely to be blamed for taking foods away from his own people rather than from the more ungrateful Marcionites! Nor let anyone blame the burdens of sacrifices and the fussy scrupulousness of rituals and offerings, as though God had desired such things for himself, when he so plainly cries out: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?” and “Who has required these things from your hands?” Rather, let him perceive God's careful purpose, by which he wished to bind a people prone to idolatry and transgression to his own religion by duties of the kind in which the superstition of the world was carried on, so as to call them away from it — commanding that these things be done to himself, as though he desired them, lest they sin by doing them for images.

And in the very dealings of life and of human conduct, at home and abroad, down to the care of vessels, he made distinctions in every way, so that, as these legal disciplines met them everywhere, they might not for a single moment be free from regard for God. For what would make a man blessed more than this: “his will is in the law of the Lord, and in the law of the Lord he will meditate day and night”? This law was not promulgated by the hardness of its author but by the reason of supreme kindness, taming rather the hardness of the people and hewing into shape, by laborious duties, a faith still rough in obedience — to say nothing of the hidden meanings of the law, which is spiritual and prophetic and figurative in nearly all its matters. For the present it is enough that it simply bound man to God, so that no one ought to reject it but one who does not care to serve God. To aid this benefit — not burden — of the law, the same goodness of God also ordained the prophets, teaching things worthy of God: to remove wickedness from the soul, to learn to do good, to seek judgment, to judge for the orphan and do justice to the widow, to love inquiry, to shun contact with the wicked, to let the oppressed go free, to tear up unjust contracts, to break bread for the hungry, to bring the homeless into your house, if you see the naked to cover him, and not to despise the members of your own family; to keep the tongue from evil and the lips from speaking deceit; to turn from evil and do good; to seek peace and pursue it; to be angry and not sin, that is, not to persist in anger or rage; not to walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the pestilent.

But where, then? “Behold how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity,” meditating day and night in the law of the Lord, since it is good to trust in God rather than to trust in man, and to hope in God rather than to hope in man. For what reward has man with God? “And he will be like a tree planted by the channels of water, which will yield its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall, and whatever he does will prosper.” “But the innocent and pure in heart, who does not take the name of God in vain and does not swear deceitfully to his neighbour, he will receive a blessing from the Lord and mercy from God his saviour.” “For the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, who hope in his mercy, to deliver their souls from death” — surely eternal death — “and to nourish them in famine” — surely of eternal life. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, and the Lord will deliver them out of them all.” “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” “The Lord keeps all their bones; not one of them will be broken.” “The Lord will redeem the souls of his servants.” These few passages we have brought in from the great Scriptures of the Creator, and nothing, I think, is now lacking to the testimony of a supremely good God, which his precepts of goodness and his promises sufficiently seal.

But these cuttlefish — in figure of whom the law also refused that fishy creature as food — as soon as they feel themselves exposed, spew out the ink of blasphemy and so scatter each person's attention just when it is closing in, flaunting and asserting things that would darken the shining goodness of the Creator. But even through these mists we shall follow their wickedness and drag the devices of darkness into the light — devices which charge the Creator above all with that fraud and robbery of gold and silver which he commanded the Hebrews to commit against the Egyptians. Come, most unhappy heretic, I call on you yourself as arbiter: first hear the case on both sides, and then you will judge the author of the command. The Egyptians demand back from the Hebrews the vessels of gold and silver. The Hebrews in turn bring counter-claims, alleging that, in the name of the same fathers and on the evidence of the same document of Scripture, wages must be paid to them too for that servile labour: for bricks made, for cities and country houses built. What will you judge, you who have chosen the supremely good god? That the Hebrews must admit fraud, or the Egyptians compensation? For it is said that the case was argued in this way through envoys on both sides, the Egyptians demanding back the vessels and the Jews demanding back their labour. And the Egyptians, being in the wrong, gave up their claims; but today the Hebrews plead further against the Marcionites, denying that any quantity of gold and silver would be enough to compensate them, if the labour of six hundred thousand men over so many years were valued at even a single coin a day. Which is the greater claim: that of those demanding back vessels, or of those who built country houses and cities? Which, then, is greater: the Egyptians' complaint or the Hebrews' claim? If free men, forced into a workhouse, were to strike back at the Egyptians only with a suit for injuries — if only their overseers were to show before the judges' benches their backs torn by the insulting savagery of the lash — the court would have pronounced that satisfaction was due to the Hebrews not with a few dishes and cups, the property of a few rich men at most, but with the entire wealth of them all and a levy on the whole population. If, then, the Hebrews' cause is good, the Creator's cause too — that is, his command — is good, who both made the Egyptians generous without their knowing it and, at the time of the departure, settled accounts with his people by the slight comfort of a silent compensation. He plainly ordered less to be exacted than was owed: for the Egyptians ought to have given the Hebrews back their sons as well.

So too in other matters you reproach him with contradictory precepts, as fickle and unstable: forbidding work on the sabbath and yet commanding the ark to be carried around for eight days — that is, on a sabbath too — in the siege of the city of Jericho. For you do not look into the law of the sabbath either, which forbids human works, not divine. For “six days,” it says, “you shall labour and do all your works, but the seventh day is the sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work on it.” What work? Surely your own. For it follows that he took away on the sabbath those works which he had assigned above to the six days — yours, that is, human and daily ones. But carrying the ark around cannot be thought either a daily work or a human one; it was rare and sacred, and, since it came at that time from God's own command, surely divine. What this itself signified I would explain, were it not tedious to unfold the figures in all the Creator's matters, which perhaps you do not even accept. But it is more telling if you are refuted from plain facts, by the simplicity of truth, not by ingenuity. So now there is a sure distinction: the sabbath forbids human works, not divine. And therefore the man who gathered sticks on the sabbath was put to death, for he had done his own work, which the law forbade; but those who carried the ark around on sabbaths did so with impunity, for they had carried out not their own work but God's, at his own command.

Likewise, in forbidding the making of a likeness of anything in heaven and on earth and in the waters, he also showed the reasons. For he adds: “You shall not worship them nor serve them.” But the image of the bronze serpent, afterwards commanded to Moses by the Lord, did not belong under the heading of idolatry; it served to heal those who were being attacked by serpents — and I say nothing of the figure in the remedy. So too the golden cherubim and seraphim, a figurative model on the ark, were certainly a simple ornament, fitted to the stand; having reasons far different from the condition of idolatry for which likeness is forbidden, they do not seem to contradict the law forbidding likenesses, since they are not found in that state of likeness for which likeness is forbidden.

We have spoken of the rational institution of sacrifices, which called those duties away from idols to God. And if he afterwards cast them off again, saying, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?”, he wanted precisely this to be understood: that he had not required them for his own sake. “For I will not drink,” he says, “the blood of bulls”; as he says elsewhere too: “The eternal God will neither hunger nor thirst.” For although he looked with favour on Abel's offerings and gladly smelled Noah's burnt offerings, what pleasure is there in the entrails of sheep or in the smoke of burning victims? But the simple and God-fearing mind of those who offered to God what they had from God, both food and sweet savour, was counted as thanks before God, who did not require what was done but that for which it was done, namely the honour of God. If a client offers a rich man or a king, who wants for nothing, some little gift, however cheap, will the size and quality of the gift shame the rich man and king, or will the dutiful intent delight him? But if a client offers him gifts, whether of his own accord or even as prescribed in his turn, and observes the king's solemnities, yet not in good faith, nor with a pure heart, nor with full obedience in other matters too, does it not follow that the king or rich man would exclaim: “What to me is the multitude of your gifts?” … “I am full,” and in saying “your solemnities and feast days and your sabbaths” — which, by celebrating them according to their own desire and not according to the religion of God, they had already made their own and not God's. So he showed that his rejection of the things he had prescribed to be performed was conditional and rational.

But if you would also have him understood as fickle in regard to persons, when he rejects those he once approved, or as improvident, when he approves those who are later to be rejected — as though he either condemned his own past judgments or did not know the future — yet nothing so befits one who is both good and a judge as to reject and to choose according to present merits. Saul is chosen, but not yet as a despiser of the prophet Samuel. Solomon is rejected, but only when already possessed by foreign women and enslaved to the idols of the Moabites and Sidonians. What should the Creator have done so as not to be censured by the Marcionites? Condemn in advance those still acting well, on account of sins to come? But it was not for a good God to condemn in advance those who did not yet deserve it. Or, on the other hand, not reject those now sinning, on account of their former good deeds? But it was not for a just judge to pardon crimes once the former good deeds had been cancelled. Or what man is without sin, so that God should always choose him and could never reject him? Or likewise, who is without any good work, so that God should always reject him and could never choose him? Show me one who is always good, and he will not be rejected; show me one who is always evil, and he will never be chosen. But if … the same man, being in both states at different times, will be assessed in both by God, who is both good and judge, and who does not change his sentences out of fickleness or lack of foresight, but with the weightiest and most provident judgment gives to each time its merits.

So too you perversely interpret repentance in him, as though he repents out of fickleness or lack of foresight, or indeed from remembering a fault, because he said: “I repent that I made Saul king” — laying it down, of course, that repentance savours of confessing some bad deed or error. But not always. For the confession of repentance also occurs in regard to good deeds, to cast odium and reproach on one who has proved ungrateful for a kindness. So it was then declared by the Creator in order to load the blame on Saul personally. The Creator had not sinned when he took Saul into the kingship and enriched him with the Holy Spirit; for he had most worthily chosen one who was then the best — “such as there was not,” it says, “among the sons of Israel.” Nor had he failed to know that things would turn out so. For no one will put up with you ascribing lack of foresight to God, whom, since you do not deny him to be God, you confess to be also provident; for this is established as the very property of his divinity. But, as I said, he was loading Saul's evil deed by professing his own repentance; and since there was no fault in the choosing of Saul, it follows that this repentance is to be understood as reproachful rather than self-accusing.

“See,” you say, “I find it self-accusing in the case of the Ninevites, where the Scripture of Jonah says: And the Lord repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. As Jonah himself also says to God: This is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, because I knew that you are merciful and compassionate, patient and abounding in mercy, repenting of evils.” Good, then, that he put first the title of the supremely good God: most patient, that is, toward the wicked, and most abundant in mercy and compassion toward those who acknowledge and bewail their sins, as the Ninevites then did. For if he who is such is supremely good, you will first have to concede this: that any concurrence with malice does not befit such a one, that is, the supremely good. And since Marcion too maintains that a good tree may not produce bad fruit either, and yet Scripture has named “evil” … which the supremely good does not admit, is there not some interpretation by which to understand those evils as being able to occur even in the supremely good? There is. We say, in short, that “evil” here signifies not what is to be referred to the Creator's nature, as though he were evil, but to his power, as judge; according to which he declared: “I am he who creates evils,” and “Behold, I send evils upon you” — not sinful evils but avenging ones. We have sufficiently washed away their ill repute, as befitting a judge. And just as these, though called evils, are not censured in a judge nor by their name show him to be an evil judge, so too this “evil” must now be understood, which, counted among those judicial evils, befits the judge together with them. For among the Greeks too “evils” are sometimes used for afflictions and injuries, not for malignities, as in this passage. And so, if the Creator repented of this evil as though of a creature of his own — something, that is, to be rejected and judged a fault — yet here too no criminal act will be charged to the Creator, who had worthily and deservedly decreed that a most wicked city be destroyed. So what he had justly purposed, he had purposed not maliciously but from justice, not from malice; but he named the punishment itself “evil,” from the evil and the deserving of the suffering itself.

“Then,” you will say, “if you excuse the evil under the name of justice, since he had justly purposed destruction for the Ninevites, even so he is to be blamed, since he repented of a justice that surely ought not to be repented of.” No, I say: God will not repent of justice either; and it remains now to recognize what God's repentance is. For if man repents mostly from remembering a sin, and sometimes from the ingratitude that met some good work, it does not follow that God does likewise. For in so far as God neither commits evil nor condemns good, so far there is no room with him for repenting of either good or evil. The same Scripture defines this for you too, when Samuel says to Saul: “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from your hand today and will give it to your neighbour, who is better than you; and Israel will be split in two; and he will not turn nor repent, for he is not as a man, that he should repent.” This definition, then, establishes throughout another form of divine repentance, which is not to be reckoned, like human repentance, as coming from lack of foresight or fickleness or from any condemnation of a good or bad work. What, then, will be the manner of divine repentance? It is already shining out, if you do not refer it to human conditions. For it will be understood as nothing else than a simple change of a previous sentence, which may be admitted without blame even in a man, much more in God, whose every sentence is free from fault. For in Greek too the word for repentance is formed not from the confession of a sin but from a change of mind, which in God, as we have shown, comes about according to the encounter of changing circumstances.

Now, to dispose of everything of this kind, I shall go on to interpret and clear up the other pettinesses, weaknesses, and incongruities, as you think them. God calls out: “Adam, where are you?” — not knowing, of course, where he was; and when Adam pleads the shame of his nakedness, God asks whether he has tasted of the tree — being uncertain, of course! On the contrary, he was neither uncertain of the deed nor ignorant of the place. Rather, it was fitting that the man hiding in the consciousness of his sin should be summoned to come out into the Lord's sight, not by the mere calling of his name but with some reproach, even then, for what he had done. For “Adam, where are you?” is not to be read in a simple, that is, a questioning tone, but in an emphatic, striking, and accusing one: “Adam, where are you!” — that is, you are lost, you are no longer here — so that the cry is one both of rebuke and of grief. Otherwise, from the eyes of him who holds the whole world in his hand like a nest, whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the earth, some corner of paradise had escaped, no doubt, so that he could not see Adam, wherever he was, before calling him — both hiding and eating of the forbidden fruit! The hare or the petty thief does not escape the watchman of your vineyard or garden; so think that God, sharper-eyed from on high, cannot miss anything beneath him. Fool, to turn up your nose at so great a proof of divine majesty and of human instruction! God asks as though uncertain so that here too, proving that man has free choice, he might give him room, in the matter of denial or confession, to confess his sin of his own accord and so to lighten it. So too he asks Cain where his brother is, as though he had not already heard Abel's blood crying out from the earth, so that Cain too might have the power, by the same power of choice, to deny his sin of his own accord and so to aggravate it. And so examples were established for us of confessing rather than denying sins, so that even then the gospel teaching might begin: “By your mouth you will be justified, and by your mouth you will be condemned.”

For although Adam was given over to death because of the state of the law, hope is kept safe for him, as the Lord says: “Behold, Adam has become like one of us” — concerning, that is, man's future adoption into divinity. And then what follows? “And now, lest he stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and live forever.” For by inserting “and now,” a word of present time, he shows that he has made a delay of life which is temporary and for the present. And so he cursed neither Adam himself nor Eve, as candidates for restoration, as relieved by their confession; but Cain he both cursed and, when Cain wished to atone for his sin by death, forbade him to die for the time being, since besides his crime he was burdened also with its denial. This, then, will be the ignorance of our God, which is feigned so that sinning man may not be ignorant of what he must do. Again, going down to Sodom and Gomorrah he says: “I will see whether they are doing altogether according to the cry that has come to me; and if not, that I may know” — here too, no doubt, uncertain from ignorance and eager to know! Or is the tone of the utterance necessary here too, expressing not a doubting but a threatening sense under the guise of inquiry? And if you also mock God's coming down, as though he could not carry out judgment without coming down, take care you do not strike your own god too. For he too came down to accomplish what he wished.

But God also swears. By Marcion's god, perhaps? “No,” he says, “much more idly: by himself.” What would you have him do, if no other god was within his knowledge — especially when he swears precisely that there is no other at all besides himself? Do you catch him, then, perjuring himself, or swearing idly? But he cannot be seen to have perjured himself who did not know, as you say, that another existed; for in swearing to what he knew, he swore truly and did not perjure himself. Nor does he swear idly that there is no other god. For he would swear idly only if there had been no one who believed in other gods — then the worshippers of images, and now the heretics too. He swears by himself, then, so that you might believe God, at least on oath, that there is no other god at all. You too, Marcion, compelled God to do this; for even then you were foreseen. Likewise, if he swears in his promises or threats, extorting a faith that was difficult in the beginning, nothing is unworthy of God that makes men believe God.

“God was petty enough then, even in his very ferocity, when, enraged against the people over the consecration of the calf, he demands of his servant Moses: Let me alone, and in indignant anger I will destroy them, and I will make you a great nation.” That is why you are accustomed to declare that Moses was better than his God, as the one who interceded — indeed, who prevented his anger: “For you shall not do this,” he says, “or else spend me too along with them.” You too are to be pitied along with the people, you who do not recognize Christ, prefigured in the person of Moses, the intercessor with the Father, who offers his own life for the salvation of the people. But it is enough that for the present the people was granted to Moses in his own right. So that the servant might be able to ask this of the Lord, the Lord asked it of himself. For this reason he said to the servant, “Let me alone, and I will destroy them”: so that Moses, by asking and offering himself, would not let him alone; and so you might learn how much is allowed to a faithful man and a prophet with God.

Now, to dispose of the rest in brief — whatever else you collect as petty, weak, and unworthy, in order to destroy the Creator — I shall set out one simple and sure reason: God could not have entered into dealings with men unless he had taken on human feelings and affections, by which he might temper with humility the force of his majesty, which human smallness surely could not bear. This humility was unworthy of himself but necessary for man, and so already worthy of God, since nothing is so worthy of God as the salvation of man. I should treat this more fully if I were dealing with pagans — although the encounter with heretics is not very different — but since you yourselves already believe that God has lived in the form and the whole order of the human condition, you will surely not require long persuading that God conformed himself to humanity; you are refuted by your own faith. For if God — and a loftier god at that — laid low the height of his majesty with such humility as even to be subjected to death, and the death of the cross, why should you not think that some pettinesses befitted our God too — more tolerable, at any rate, than the insults of the Jews and the gibbet and the tomb? Or are these the pettinesses which must from now on prejudge that Christ, exposed to human sufferings, belongs to that God whom you reproach with human traits?

For we too profess that Christ always acted in the name of God the Father; that it was he himself who lived among men from the beginning, he himself who met with the patriarchs and prophets: the Son of the Creator, his Word, whom by bringing him forth from himself he made his Son, and thereafter set over his whole arrangement and will, making him a little lower than the angels, as is written in his Scripture. By this lowering he was also appointed by the Father to those things which you censure as human, learning even from the beginning what he was to be at the end. It is he who comes down, he who asks, he who demands, he who swears. Moreover, even the gospel we hold in common will testify that the Father has been seen by no one, since Christ says: “No one has known the Father except the Son.” For he himself had declared in the Old Testament too: “No one shall see God and live,” marking the Father as invisible, in whose authority and name he himself was God who was seen, the Son of God. But with us too Christ is received in the person of Christ, because in this way too he is ours. Whatever, then, you require as worthy of God will be found in the Father, invisible and unapproachable and serene, the god, so to speak, of the philosophers; but whatever you censure as unworthy will be reckoned to the Son, who was seen and heard and met with, the Father's agent and minister, mingling in himself man and God — God in mighty works, man in weaknesses — so that he confers on man as much as he takes from God.

In short, the whole of what you count my God's disgrace is the sacrament of human salvation. God lived among men in human fashion so that man might be taught to act in divine fashion. God dealt with man as an equal so that man might be able to deal with God as an equal. God was found small so that man might become very great. You who disdain such a God — I do not know whether you believe, in faith, in a crucified God. How great, then, is your perversity toward both aspects of the Creator! You designate him a judge, and reproach as cruelty the judge's severity, which fits the merits of the cases; you demand a supremely good God, and belittle as pettiness his gentleness, which fits his kindness and has been conducted more humbly to suit the capacity of human smallness. Neither the great God pleases you nor the small, neither the judge nor the friend. What if the same things are now detected in yours as well? We have already shown in its own book that he too is a judge, and, being a judge, necessarily severe, and, being severe, of course cruel — if severity is cruel at all.

Now, regarding pettinesses and malignities and the other marks of censure, I too will make rival antitheses against Marcion. If my God did not know that there was another above him, your god too did not know at all that there was another below him. For what does that obscure Heraclitus say? “The way up and the way down are the same.” In short, if he had not been ignorant, he would have opposed him from the beginning. Sin and death, and the devil himself, the author of sin, and every evil which my God allowed to exist — this yours too allowed, since he allowed my God to allow it. Our God changed his sentences; just so did yours. For he who looked upon the human race so late changed that sentence by which for so long an age he did not look upon it. Our God repented of something; so did yours. For by at last turning his attention to man's salvation he repented of his former neglect, a repentance owed for a bad deed. And the neglect of human salvation will be counted a bad deed, amended with your god only by repentance. Our God commanded a fraud — but of gold and silver. But as much as man is more precious than gold and silver, so much more fraudulent is your god, who snatches man away from his lord and maker. Our God demands an eye for an eye; but yours, by forbidding retaliation, rather multiplies injury. For who will not strike again if he is not struck back? Our God did not know what sort of men he was choosing; neither, then, did yours: he would not have chosen Judas the traitor if he had known beforehand. If you say that the Creator lied somewhere, a far greater lie is in your Christ, whose body was not real. The cruelty of my God has consumed many; your god too surely consigns to destruction those he does not save. My God ordered someone to be killed; yours willed himself to be killed, no less a murderer of himself than of the one by whom he wished to be killed. And I will prove to Marcion that his god killed many: for he made the people murderers, who will surely perish — unless they did no wrong against Christ. But the ready strength of truth is content with few words; falsehood will need many.

For the rest, I would have cut down Marcion's Antitheses themselves at close quarters, if the defence of the Creator needed a more laborious demolition of them — the Creator who is both good and judge, according to examples of each aspect that befit God, as we have shown. But if both aspects, goodness and justice, make up the worthy fullness of the divinity of the Almighty, I can meanwhile beat back in brief the Antitheses, which are eager to distinguish Christ from the Creator by the qualities of their characters, or of their laws, or of their mighty works, and so to estrange them, as the supremely good from the judge, the gentle from the fierce, the saving from the destroying. For they rather join together those whom they set in differences that befit God. Take away Marcion's title and the aim and purpose of his work itself, and it … nothing other than a demonstration of one and the same God, supremely good and judge, since these two belong to God alone. For the very effort to set Christ against the Creator in those examples points rather to their unity. For so truly was the substance of divinity one and the same, good and severe, that by the same examples and in similar matters it chose to show its goodness where it had first shown its severity; and the difference of times will be no wonder, if God is afterwards milder because things have been tamed, who before was more austere because they were untamed. So by means of the Antitheses it can more easily be shown that the Creator's order was reformed by Christ rather than struck down, restored rather than excluded — especially since you set your god apart from every harsher emotion, and so surely from rivalry with the Creator too. For if so, how do the Antitheses show him rivalling the Creator in each particular? I shall recognize, then, in this also, through them, my jealous God, who by his own right, with a good because rational jealousy, took care to bring to ripeness his works that at the beginning were still rough and woody; whose antitheses even his world itself will acknowledge, regulated as it is out of contrary elements, yet by the highest reason. Therefore, most thoughtless Marcion, you ought to have shown one god of light and another of darkness, so that you might more easily have persuaded us of one god of goodness and another of severity. But the antitheses will belong to him to whom they belong in the world too.

Following the footprints of my earlier work, which I am persevering in restoring after it was lost, the order of argument now turns to Christ, though this is more than is needed after the defense of the one Godhead has been completed. For it has been sufficiently settled in advance that Christ is to be understood as belonging to no other god than the Creator, once it has been determined that no god other than the Creator is to be believed; whom Christ so preached, and after him the apostles proclaimed a Christ belonging to no other than the God whom Christ preached, that is, the Creator, that no mention of another god, and so of another Christ, was ever raised before the scandal of Marcion. This is most easily proved by a review of the apostolic and the heretical churches: the perversion of the rule must be declared to lie there, clearly, where it is found to come later. I wove this into my first book as well. But now too this engagement, which will examine Christ separately, will certainly be of use to this end: that while we prove Christ to be the Creator's, Marcion's god is in this way also shut out. It befits the truth to use all its strength, not as though it were struggling (for it wins in any case by the short ways of prescription) but as eager to meet its adversary everywhere, an adversary so frenzied that he has more readily presumed that a Christ has come who was never announced than that one has come who was always foretold.

From here, then, I take my first step: whether he ought to have come so suddenly. First, as being himself the Son of his God; for the proper order was that the Father should acknowledge the Son before the Son the Father, and that the Father should bear witness about the Son before the Son about the Father. Next, as one sent, apart from the name of Son. For the backing of the sender ought likewise to have gone before, as testimony for the one sent, since no one who comes on another's authority vindicates that authority for himself by his own assertion; rather he waits to be vindicated by it, the recommendation of the one who grants the authority going before him. Otherwise neither will he be recognized as a son whom a father has never named, nor believed to be sent whom a commissioner has never designated. The father would have named him, and the commissioner designated him, if there had been such. Everything that departs from the rule of things will be held suspect, a rule which does not allow the principal degrees to be recognized afterwards: the father after the son, the commissioner after the commissioned, God after Christ. Nothing that is prior in its origin comes later in recognition, because it does not come later in arrangement either. A sudden son, a suddenly sent one, a sudden Christ! But I would think nothing from God is sudden, because nothing from God is not arranged. And if arranged, why not also foretold, so that it could be proved both to be arranged, from the foretelling, and to be divine, from the arrangement? And surely so great a work, one being prepared for human salvation, should not have been sudden, at least in so far as it was to profit by means of faith. For in so far as it had to be believed in order to profit, to that extent it required preparation so that it could be believed, built up on the foundations of arrangement and foretelling, so that faith, shaped by this order, might rightly be both laid upon man by God and rendered to God by man, owing belief out of recognition: because it could believe, having learned from the foretelling what to believe.

“There was no need,” you say, “for an order of that kind, because he was going to prove at once, by the facts themselves, through the evidence of mighty works, that he was Son and Sent and the Christ of God.” But I will deny that this kind of evidence alone was adequate to testify for him, since he himself later stripped it of its authority. For when he declared that many would come and do signs and perform great mighty works, to the point of turning aside even the elect, and yet were not on that account to be received, he showed that faith based on signs and mighty works is rash, since they come very easily even to false Christs. Or what sort of thing is it that he wished to be proved, understood, and received from the very source (from mighty works, I mean) from which he did not wish the others to be, though they too were to come just as suddenly and were announced by no authority? If, because he came before them and was first to set his seal on the evidence of mighty works, he therefore seized faith for himself, like a place in the baths, and snatched it away from all who came after, beware lest he himself too be caught in the position of those who come later, found to be later than the Creator, who was already known before, who likewise performed mighty works before, and who likewise warned that others were not to be believed, namely those coming after him. So if having come first and having first made pronouncements about those to come after is what secures faith, he too will have been condemned in advance by the one after whom he was recognized, and the authority of laying down this rule about later comers will belong to the Creator alone, who, being later than no one, could not … Now then, since I am going to prove that the Creator both in times past performed through his servants the very same mighty works which you claim for your Christ as the only ground of faith, and appointed them to be performed through his own Christ, I can on this ground too rightly lay down in advance that your Christ ought all the more not to have been believed on the ground of mighty works alone, in that people could have interpreted him as belonging to no other than the Creator, since the works corresponded to the Creator's mighty works, both those performed through his servants and those promised for his Christ. And yet, even if other evidences were found in your Christ, new ones naturally, we would more readily believe that the new ones too belonged to the one to whom the old ones also belong than to one to whom only new ones belong, which lack the proof of trust that belongs to victorious antiquity. So on this ground too he ought to have come foretold, with foretellings of his own building up faith in him as well as mighty works; above all since he was to come against the Creator's Christ, who was fortified with both signs and prophecies of his own, so that as rival of that Christ he might shine out in every kind of difference. But how could his Christ be foretold by a god who was never foretold? This, then, is what you demand: that neither your god nor your Christ be believed, since both the god ought not to have been unknown and the Christ ought to have been recognized through the god.

He disdained, I suppose, to imitate the order of our God, as one who displeased him and was above all to be refuted. A new god, he chose to come in a new way: a son before the father's acknowledgement, and one sent before the commissioner's authority, so as to introduce a most monstrous faith as well, by which one would believe that Christ had come before one knew that he existed. It also falls to me to take up this question: why did he not come after Christ? For when I consider his god, so patient for so long an age with a most harsh Creator, who meanwhile was announcing his own Christ to mankind, I say that for whatever reason he did this, deferring both his revelation and his intervention, for that same reason he ought to have shown patience with the Creator in his Christ too, who was going to carry out his arrangements, so that when every operation of the rival god and the rival Christ had been completed and fulfilled, he might then bring in his own arrangements over them. But if he repented of so great patience, in that he did not persevere to the end of the Creator's affairs, he tolerated in vain the foretelling of that god's Christ, whose appearing he did not tolerate. Either he broke into the course of another's time without reason, or without reason he did not break into it for so long. What held him back, or what disturbed him? In fact he offended both ways: revealed so late after the Creator, and so hastily before his Christ. The one he ought to have exposed long ago, the other not yet: he should not have endured the one raging so long, nor disturbed the other while still at rest. Toward both he falls short of the title of the “good God,” and shows himself changeable and uncertain: lukewarm toward the Creator, hot against Christ, and futile in both directions. For he no more restrained the Creator than he blocked Christ. The Creator remains just what he is; and Christ will come just as he is written. Why did he come after the Creator, whom he could not correct? Why was he revealed before that god's Christ, whom he could not call back? Or if he corrected the Creator, being revealed after him so that what needed correcting should come first, then he ought equally to have waited for his Christ in order to correct him too, and so be his later corrector as well as the Creator's. It is another matter if he too is to come again after him, so that in his first coming he advanced against the Creator, destroying his law and prophets, and in his second advances against Christ, refuting his kingdom. Then, therefore, he will complete his order; then, perhaps, he should be believed. Or if his business is already finished now, then he will come in vain, since he will have nothing to accomplish.

Let these be my opening skirmishes, as it were from the first line and still at a distance. But from here on, since I am going to fight at close quarters and with certainty, I see that certain lines must still be drawn in advance along which the fight will be fought, namely the Scriptures of the Creator. For since I am going to prove from them that Christ was the Creator's, as having been later fulfilled in his Christ, I must also set out the form, and so to speak the nature, of these Scriptures themselves, so that they are not drawn into controversy just when they are brought to bear on the issues, and dull the reader's attention by mixing their own defense with the defense of the issues. I therefore put forward two features of prophetic speech which our adversaries must from now on acknowledge. The first is that future things are sometimes stated as already past. For it befits the Godhead to regard whatever it has decreed as accomplished, because with it there is no distinction of time, since eternity itself directs a uniform state of time in it; and it is more natural to prophetic divination to show what it foresees, while it foresees it, as already seen and so already completed, that is, as in every way certain to come, as through Isaiah: “I gave my back to the scourges, and my cheeks to the palms of the hand, and I did not turn my face away from spitting.” For whether Christ was already then speaking of himself, as we hold, or the prophet of himself, as the Jews hold, what had not yet been done was nonetheless voiced as already past. The other feature will be that many things are foretold figuratively, through riddles, allegories, and parables, to be understood otherwise than as written. For we read that the mountains will drip sweetness, yet not so that you should expect grape syrup from the rocks or boiled-down wine from the cliffs; and we hear of a land flowing with milk and honey, yet not so that you should believe you will ever make cakes and Samian delicacies out of clods of earth. For God did not straightaway promise to be a water-finder and a farmer when he said, “I will put rivers in a thirsty region, and box and cedar in the wilderness”; just as, foretelling the conversion of the nations, “The beasts of the field will bless me, the sirens and the daughters of the sparrows,” he certainly does not mean to bring back happy omens from swallows' chicks and little foxes and those monstrous, fabled songstresses. And why should I say more of this kind? Since even the heretics' apostle interprets the law itself, which allows the ox that treads the grain a free mouth, as said not of oxen but of us; and asserts that the rock which accompanied them to supply drink was Christ; teaching the Galatians likewise that the two accounts of Abraham's sons ran as allegory, and suggesting to the Ephesians that what was declared at the beginning of man, who would leave father and mother and the two would become one flesh, he recognizes as referring to Christ and the church.

If these two peculiarities of Jewish literature are sufficiently established for the present, remember, reader, that it has been settled that, when we bring forward anything of this kind, the question is not reopened about the form of Scripture but concerns the state of the case. Since, then, heretical madness presumed that a Christ had come who had never been announced, it followed that it should contend that the Christ who had always been foretold had not yet come; and so it was forced to join with the error of the Jews and build its argument from it, as though the Jews, themselves certain that the one who came was a stranger, not only rejected him as a foreigner but even killed him as an adversary, whereas they would doubtless have recognized him and attended him with every duty of religion if he had been theirs. No doubt a law, not of Rhodes but of Pontus, had provided for that ship-owner that the Jews could not err about their own Christ; when, even if nothing of the kind were found foretold against them, the human condition alone, liable to deception, would surely have persuaded him that the Jews could err, being men, and that no prejudgment should be taken from the opinion of those who may credibly have erred. Moreover, since it was also foretold that they would not recognize Christ and therefore would even put him to death, then he will be the very one who was both unrecognized and put to death by them, against whom they were marked out beforehand to commit such things. If you demand proof of this, I shall not unroll those Scriptures which, declaring that Christ could be put to death, also affirm that he could go unrecognized (for unless he were unrecognized, he could suffer nothing); but, keeping those for the question of the sufferings, it will suffice at present to bring forward those foretellings which meanwhile prove that Christ could go unrecognized, and that briefly, since they show that all power of understanding was taken away from the people by the Creator. “I will take away,” he says, “the wisdom of their wise, and the prudence of their prudent I will hide”; and: “With the ear you will hear and not hear, and with the eyes you will see and not see; for the heart of this people has grown fat, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and their eyes they have shut, lest at some time they hear with their ears and see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn, and I heal them.” They had deserved this dulling of their saving senses, loving God with their lips but in heart standing far off from him. So if Christ was being announced by the Creator, who establishes the thunder and creates the wind and announces his Christ to mankind according to the prophet Joel; if all the hope of the Jews, not to say also of the Gentiles, was directed toward the revelation of Christ, then without doubt it was being shown that they would not recognize or understand what was being announced, that is Christ, the powers of recognition and understanding, wisdom and prudence, having been taken away; that their chief wise men, that is the scribes, and their prudent men, that is the Pharisees, would err about him; and likewise that the people would hear with their ears and not hear, Christ teaching, of course, and see with their eyes and not see, Christ doing signs, of course; according to what is said elsewhere as well: “And who is blind but my servants? And who is deaf but those who rule over them?” And also when he reproaches them through the same Isaiah: “Sons I have begotten and raised up, but they have rejected me; the ox knew its owner and the ass its master's manger, but Israel has not known me and the people has not understood me.” We indeed are certain that Christ always spoke in the prophets (the Spirit of the Creator, as the prophet testifies: “The person of our spirit, Christ the Lord”), who from the beginning, as the Father's deputy, was both heard and seen in the name of God; and we know that such were his words, even then reproaching Israel for what they were foretold to commit against him: “You have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” But if you prefer to refer the whole charge of Jewish ignorance of old not to Christ but rather to God himself, unwilling to grant that even in the past the Word and Spirit, that is, the Creator's Christ, was despised and not recognized by them, even so you are refuted. For since you do not deny that his Christ is the Son and Spirit and substance of the Creator, you must concede that those who did not recognize the Father could not recognize the Son either, by the condition of the same substance; for if its fullness was not understood, much more so the portion, as sharer in the fullness. With these matters thus examined, it is now clear how the Jews both rejected Christ and killed him: not understanding him as a foreign Christ, but not recognizing him as their own. For they could not have understood a foreign one about whom nothing had ever been announced, whereas they could have understood one who had always been foretold. For that alone admits of being understood or not understood which, having the substance of a foretelling, will have the material for either recognition or error; what lacks that material does not allow any outcome of wisdom. And so it was not as the Christ of another god that they turned from him and persecuted him, but only as a man whom they thought a deceiver in his signs and a rival in his teachings; so that they brought the man himself to judgment as their own, that is a Jew, but a subverter and destroyer of Judaism, and punished him by their own law, which they would not have used in judging a stranger. So far are they from seeming to have understood Christ as a stranger, that they did not even judge his humanity as that of a stranger.

Now let the heretic learn, along with the Jew himself (it will be more than enough), the reason for the Jew's errors too, from whom he borrowed his leadership in this argument and, the blind led by the blind, has fallen into the same pit. We say that the prophets, by showing two conditions of Christ, marked out beforehand the same number of comings. The one in humility, the first of course, when he was to be led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb voiceless before the shearer, so not opening his mouth; not even comely in appearance. “For we have announced concerning him,” it says, “as a little child, as a root in a thirsty land; and he has no form or glory; and we saw him, and he had no form or beauty, but his form was without honor, falling short of the sons of men; a man under the stroke, and knowing how to bear weakness”; as one set by the Father as a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; made by him a little lower than the angels; declaring himself a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and the scorn of the people. These marks of lowliness befit the first coming, as those of sublimity befit the second, when he will no longer be a stone of stumbling or a rock of offense, but the chief cornerstone, taken up after rejection and raised to complete the temple, that is, the church; and indeed that stone in Daniel cut from the mountain, which will shatter and grind the image of the kingdoms of the world. Of this coming the same prophet says: “And behold, one coming as a son of man with the clouds of heaven came as far as the Ancient of Days. He stood in his sight, and those who stood by brought him near. And there was given to him royal power, and all the nations of the earth according to their kinds, and all glory serving him. And his power is for ever, which will not be taken away, and his kingdom, which will not be corrupted.” Then, clearly, he will have a form full of honor and a beauty unfailing beyond the sons of men: “For you are in the bloom of beauty,” it says, “beyond the sons of men; grace is poured out on your lips; therefore God has blessed you for ever. Gird your sword upon your thigh, mighty in your bloom and your beauty”; when also the Father, after he made him a little lower than the angels, will crown him with glory and honor and put all things under his feet. Then too those who pierced him will know him, and will beat their breasts, tribe by tribe, because in the past they did not recognize him in the lowliness of the human condition: “He is a man too,” says Jeremiah, “and who will know him?” For also: “His generation,” says Isaiah, “who will declare?” So too in Zechariah, in the person of Jesus, and indeed in the very mystery of the name, the true high priest of the Father, Christ Jesus, is sketched in a twofold condition for the two comings. First he is clothed in filthy garments, that is, in the indignity of passible and mortal flesh, when the devil also opposed him (the instigator, that is, of Judas the betrayer, not to mention his tempter after his baptism too); then he is stripped of his former filth and adorned with a full-length robe, a miter, and a clean turban, that is, with the glory and honor of the second coming. For if I also interpret the two goats that were offered at the fast, do they not also figure both stages of Christ? They were equal and alike, because of the Lord's one appearance, since he will not come in another form, as one who is to be recognized by those by whom he was wounded. But one of them, surrounded with scarlet, cursed, spat upon, torn, and pierced, was cast out by the people outside the city to perdition, marked with the plain signs of the Lord's passion; while the other, offered for sins and given to the priests of the temple for food, set its seal on the proofs of the second appearing, in which, when all sins have been expiated, the priests of the spiritual temple, that is, of the church, would enjoy as it were a public distribution of meat from the Lord's grace, while the rest go fasting from salvation. Since, then, the first coming was foretold as both much obscured by figures and cast down by every indignity, and the second as both manifest and worthy of God, therefore, fixing their eyes on the one alone which they could easily both understand and believe, that is, the second, they were not undeservedly deceived about the more obscure, certainly the less worthy, that is, the first. And so to this day they deny that their Christ has come, because he did not come in sublimity, not knowing that he was to come in humility as well.

Let the heretic now stop borrowing poison from the Jew, the asp, as they say, from the viper; let him now vomit up the venom of his own invention, claiming that Christ was a phantom. Except that in this opinion too he will have other forerunners, premature and in a way abortive Marcionites, whom the apostle John declared antichrists, denying that Christ had come in the flesh; not, however, in order to establish the right of another god (for on that point too they would have been branded), but because they had presumed it incredible that God should have flesh. All the more did the antichrist Marcion seize that presumption for himself, being better suited, naturally, to reject the bodily substance of Christ, since he had brought in a god who was neither the author of flesh nor its raiser, supremely good, no doubt, in this too, and utterly unlike the lies and deceits of the Creator. And so his Christ, so as not to lie or deceive and in this way perhaps be counted the Creator's, was not what he seemed and lied about what he was: flesh and not flesh, man and not man; and likewise, I suppose, God and not God. For why should he not have carried a phantom of God as well? Or am I to believe him about his inner substance, when he has been a cheat about his outer one? How will he be held truthful in what is hidden, when he has been found so deceitful in what is open? And how, by mixing in himself the truth of the spirit with the deceit of the flesh, did he make that fellowship of light, that is truth, with darkness, that is deceit, which the apostle denies? Now then, when the flesh of Christ is detected as a lie, it follows that everything done through the flesh of Christ was done by a lie: his meetings, his touching, his living with others, even his mighty works. For if by touching someone he freed him from an affliction, or was touched by someone, what was done bodily cannot be believed to have been truly done without the reality of the body itself. Nothing solid could be accomplished by what is empty, nothing full by what is void: a supposed condition, a supposed action; an imaginary worker, imaginary works. So neither will the sufferings of his Christ deserve belief. For he suffered nothing who did not truly suffer, and a phantom could not truly suffer. The whole work of God, then, is overturned. The whole weight and fruit of the Christian name, the death of Christ, is denied, which the apostle so emphatically commends, as real of course, making it the highest foundation of the gospel, of our salvation, and of his own preaching: “For I delivered to you,” he says, “first of all, that Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried, and that he rose on the third day.” Further, if his flesh is denied, how is his death asserted, which is the passion proper to flesh, as it returns through death into the earth from which it was taken, according to the law of its author? And once death is denied by denying the flesh, there will be no certainty about the resurrection either. For he did not rise, for the same reason that he did not die, namely not having the substance of flesh, to which resurrection belongs as death does. And so, once the resurrection of Christ is weakened, ours too is overturned. For it will not hold, the resurrection for whose sake Christ came, if Christ's does not hold. For just as those who said there is no resurrection of the dead are refuted by the apostle from the resurrection of Christ, so, if the resurrection of Christ does not stand, the resurrection of the dead is also taken away. And so our faith too is empty, and empty the preaching of the apostles. And they are even found to be false witnesses of God, because they testified that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise. And we are still in our sins, and those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished; due to rise again, certainly, but perhaps as a phantom, like Christ.

On this question, you who think the Creator's angels should be set against us, as though they too acted in a phantom, of course a supposed flesh, in the presence of Abraham and Lot, and yet truly met with them, ate, and carried out what they had been commanded: first, you will not be admitted to examples from the God whom you are destroying. For the better and more perfect the god you bring in, the less do that God's examples fit him, since unless he is wholly different he will not be better and more perfect at all. Next, know that it is not conceded to you either that the flesh in the angels was supposed; it was of true and solid human substance. For if it was not hard for him to display true senses and actions in a supposed flesh, it was much easier for him to give a true substance of flesh to true senses and actions, as its own author and craftsman. Your god, since he produced no flesh at all, might perhaps fittingly have brought in a phantom of that whose reality he had not been able to make; but my God, who took flesh from the clay and re-formed it into its present quality, not yet from married seed and yet flesh, could equally have built up flesh for the angels too out of any material whatever, he who built even the world out of nothing into so many and such great bodies, and that by a word. And surely, if your god promises men at some time the true substance of angels (“For they will be,” he says, “like angels”), why should my God not have fitted the true substance of men to angels, taken from wherever it was taken? For you will not answer me either where that angelic substance is taken from in your system. It is enough for me to define what befits God: namely the reality of the thing he presented to three witnessing senses, sight, touch, and hearing. It is harder for God to lie than to produce the reality of flesh from wherever he will, even though it was not born. Besides, to other heretics, who lay it down that that flesh in the angels would have had to be born of flesh if it had truly been human, we reply with a sure reason why it was both truly human and unborn. Truly human, because of the truthfulness of God, who is a stranger to lying and deceit, and because they could not be handled in human fashion by men except in human substance. Unborn, because Christ alone was to be born into flesh from flesh, in order to re-form our birth by his own birth, and so also to dissolve our death by his own death, rising again in the flesh in which he was born so that he could also die. And that is why he himself too appeared then with the angels at Abraham's tent in the reality of flesh, but flesh not yet born, because not yet to die, but already learning to live among men. All the more, then, the angels, not appointed to die for us, did not need to have taken on their brief furlough of flesh by being born, since they were not going to lay it down by dying. But wherever it was taken from, and however it was finally laid aside, they did not pretend it. If the Creator makes his angels spirits and his attendants a flaming fire, as truly spirits as fire, he likewise truly made them flesh; so that we may now recall, and announce to the heretics, that it belongs to him who once formed angels into men to promise that he will at some time re-form men into angels.

So, since you are not admitted to share in the Creator's examples, as belonging to another and having reasons of their own, I should like you yourself to set out your god's plan in exhibiting his Christ not in the reality of flesh. If he despised it as earthly and, as you people say, stuffed with dung, why did he not likewise scorn its likeness? For no image of a thing that deserves disdain deserves honor: the likeness follows the status. “But how could he live among men except through an image of human substance?” Why not rather through its reality, then, so as truly to live among them, if he had to live among them? How much more worthily would necessity have been served by good faith than by a trick! You make your god wretched enough by this very fact, that he could not exhibit his Christ except in the likeness of an unworthy thing, and one belonging to another at that. To some extent it will be fitting to use unworthy things if they are our own, just as it will not be fitting to use things belonging to another, even if worthy. Why then did he not come in some other, worthier substance, and above all his own, so as not to seem to have needed a thing both unworthy and foreign? If my Creator met with man through a bush and fire as well, and afterwards through a cloud and a pillar, and made use of the bodies of the elements in representations of himself, these examples of divine power show well enough that God did not need to provide either false or even true flesh. But if we look at the truth of the matter, no substance is worthy for God to put on. Whatever he puts on, he himself makes worthy, yet without a lie. And so what sort of thing is it that he should have thought the reality of flesh a disgrace rather than its falsehood? Yet he honored it by feigning it. How great flesh must be, when a phantom of it was necessary to a superior god!

Marcion took up all these conjuring tricks of a supposed bodiliness in Christ with this purpose: that his birth too should not be established from the evidence of human substance, and so Christ be claimed for the Creator, as one announced as capable of birth and therefore made of flesh. Very foolish here too, the man from Pontus: as if flesh in God were not more easily believed unborn than false, especially when the Creator's angels, who lived in true flesh and yet unborn, lay the groundwork for that belief. For that Philumene, too, rather persuaded Apelles and the other deserters from Marcion that Christ did carry flesh about in reality, yet flesh of no birth, as having borrowed it from the elements. But if Marcion feared that belief in flesh would also bring in belief in birth, then without doubt one who was seen to be a man was certainly believed to have been born. For a certain woman had cried out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts you sucked”; and how were his mother and brothers said to be standing outside? Certainly, when he proclaimed himself the Son of Man, he was professing that he was born. We shall see about these passages in their proper time. For now, though I have put all these off to the examination of the gospel, still, as I laid down above: if one who was seen to be a man was bound in any case to be believed born, he thought in vain that belief in his birth could be overthrown by the device of imaginary flesh. For what did it profit that both flesh and birth were not real, when they were held to be real? Or if you say, “Let human opinion see to that,” you already honor your god with the title of deceit, if he knew himself to be other than he had made men think. Then you could equally have fitted him with a supposed birth, so as not to run into this question as well. For little women sometimes think themselves pregnant, swollen either by the tribute of blood or by some illness. And surely he ought to have played the phantom's stage-part through to the end, so that one who had acted the role of the substance itself should not leave out in his dance the origin of the flesh. Plainly you rejected the lie of a birth, for you put forward flesh itself as real. A real birth, no doubt, is the most shameful thing even for God! Come then, declaim against those most holy and venerable works of nature, inveigh against all that you are; destroy the origin of flesh and soul; call the womb a sewer, the workshop for producing so great a living being, that is, man; pursue the uncleanness and the shameful torments of childbirth, and the filthy, anxious, ridiculous outcome of the delivery itself. Yet when you have destroyed all these, to confirm that they are unworthy of God, birth will not be more unworthy than death, nor infancy than the cross, nor nature than punishment, nor flesh than condemnation. If Christ truly suffered these things, to be born was less; if he suffered them by a lie, as a phantom, he could also be born by a lie. These are the chief arguments of Marcion by which he makes Christ another's; I think we have shown well enough that they do not stand at all, while we teach that the reality of the condition in which God exhibited his Christ befits him far more than a lie. If it was reality, it was flesh; if it was flesh, he was born. For the things this heresy attacks are confirmed when the things by which it attacks are destroyed. So if he is to be held fleshly because born, and born because fleshly, because he was not a phantom, then he is to be recognized as the one whom the Creator's prophets announced as coming in the flesh and by birth, as being the Creator's Christ.

Challenge me now, as you usually do, over this comparison of Christ with Isaiah, contending that it fits in no respect. “For first,” you say, “Isaiah's Christ will have to be called Emmanuel, and then to take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians. But this one who came was neither brought forth under a name of that kind nor engaged in any warfare.” But I will remind you to consider also what belongs with each of the two statements. For the interpretation of Emmanuel is added as well, “God with us,” so that you should look not only at the sound of the name but also at its sense. For the sound, Hebrew, that is “Emmanuel,” belongs to its own nation; but its sense, that is “God with us,” is common to all through translation. Ask, then, whether this phrase, “God with us,” which is “Emmanuel,” has been in use of Christ since Christ shone forth. And I think you will not deny it, since you yourself say “God with us,” that is, Emmanuel. Or if you are so foolish that, because with you he is called “God with us” and not “Emmanuel,” you therefore refuse to admit the coming of him whose proper title is to be called Emmanuel, as if this were not also “God with us,” you will find that among the Hebrews the Christians, and indeed the Marcionites, name Emmanuel when they mean to say “God with us”; just as every nation, in whatever sounds it says “God with us,” will be pronouncing Emmanuel, fulfilling the sound in the sense. But if Emmanuel is “God with us,” and “God with us” is Christ, who is even in us (“for as many of you as were dipped into Christ have put on Christ”), then Christ is as properly in the meaning of the name, “God with us,” as in the sound of the name, “Emmanuel.” And so it is established that he who was foretold as Emmanuel has already come, because what Emmanuel signifies has come, that is, “God with us.”

You are likewise led by the sound of names when you take “the power of Damascus,” “the spoils of Samaria,” and “the king of the Assyrians” as if they portended that the Creator's Christ would be a warrior, not noticing what Scripture puts first: “For before the child knows how to call father and mother, he will take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians.” You should first look at the indication of age, whether it can present Christ as yet a man, let alone a general. No doubt the infant was to summon men to arms with his wailing and give the signal for battle not with a trumpet but with a rattle, and mark out the enemy not from horse or chariot or wall but from the neck or back of his nurse or carrier, and so subdue Damascus and Samaria instead of the breast! It is another matter if among you people of Pontus the infants of a barbarous nation burst into battle, first oiled, I suppose, in the sun, then armed with swaddling clothes and paid in butter, who know how to throw a lance before they know how to lick. Indeed, if nature nowhere allows this, to serve as a soldier before becoming a man, to take the power of Damascus before knowing the words for father and mother, it follows that the statement must be seen as figurative. “But nature does not allow a virgin to give birth either,” he says, “and yet the prophet is believed.” And rightly; for he laid the groundwork for belief in an incredible thing by giving the reason, that it was to be a sign: “Therefore,” he says, “the Lord will give you a sign: behold, a virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a son.” But a sign from God would not have been a sign unless it were some wondrous novelty. Finally, the Jews, whenever they dare to lie in order to throw us down, as though Scripture says not that a virgin but that a young woman will conceive and bear, are refuted by this: that an everyday thing, the pregnancy and childbirth of a young woman, can have no appearance of a sign. The virgin mother, then, appointed for a sign, will rightly be believed; but the warrior infant not equally, for the ground of a sign does not operate here. Rather, after the sign attached to the new birth, the next stage of the infant is then declared in another place, as one who is to eat honey and butter (and this is surely not for a sign, for it belongs to infancy too), and also to take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians. Keep to the measure of his age and look for the sense of the prophecy; indeed, give back to the gospel of truth what you took from it as a later arrival, and the prophecy is understood as clearly as it is reported fulfilled. For let those magi of the East stand firm, honoring the newborn infancy of Christ with gold and incense, and the infant has taken the power of Damascus without battle and weapons. For besides what is known to everyone, that the power of the East, that is its strength and resources, used to abound in gold and spices, it is certainly the Creator's way to make gold the power of other nations too, as through Zechariah: “And Judah will stand forth at Jerusalem and will gather all the strength of the peoples round about, gold and silver.” And of that gift of gold David too says: “And there will be given to him of the gold of Arabia”; and again: “The kings of the Arabs and of Sheba will offer him gifts.” For the East generally held magi to be kings, and Damascus was formerly reckoned part of Arabia, before it was transferred to Syrophoenicia when the Syrias were divided; whose power Christ then took by taking its tokens, namely gold and spices. And the spoils of Samaria were the magi themselves, who, when they had recognized him, honored him with gifts, and on bended knee worshiped him as God and king, under the witness of the star that pointed the way and led them, became spoils of Samaria, that is of idolatry, by believing, of course, in Christ. For he marked idolatry by the name of Samaria, as disgraced for the idolatry by which it had then fallen away from God under King Jeroboam. Nor is this new for the Creator, to use a figurative transfer of names on the ground of comparable crimes. For he calls the rulers of the Jews rulers of Sodom, and the people itself the people of Gomorrah; and likewise elsewhere, “Your father,” he says, “was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite,” on account of like impiety, though he had once called them his own sons: “Sons I have begotten and raised up.” So too Egypt is sometimes understood by him as the whole world, under the charge of superstition and curse. So too Babylon, in our John as well, is a figure of the city of Rome, as likewise great, proud in its empire, and warring down the saints of God. It is by this usage, then, that he titled the magi too with the name of Samaritans, stripped of what they had held in common with the Samaritans, as we said, idolatry. And by “against the king of the Assyrians” understand “against Herod,” whom the magi indeed opposed at that time by not reporting to him about Christ, whom he was seeking to seize.

This interpretation of ours will be helped when, supposing Christ a warrior elsewhere too because of the names of certain weapons and words of that kind, you are refuted by comparison with the sense of the rest as well. “Gird your sword,” says David, “upon your thigh.” But what do you read of Christ just before? “You are in the bloom of beauty beyond the sons of men; grace is poured out on your lips.” It makes me laugh, if the one he was girding with a sword for war he was flattering about the bloom of his beauty and the grace of his lips. So too, adding, “and stretch out, and prosper, and reign,” he went on: “because of truth and gentleness and justice.” For who will work these things with a sword, and not rather their opposites, deceit, harshness, and injustice, the proper business of battles? Let us see, then, whether that sword is not a different one, since its action is different. For the apostle John too in the Apocalypse describes a sword coming out of the mouth of God, two-edged and very sharp, which must be understood as the divine Word: two-edged by the two testaments of the law and the gospel, sharp with wisdom, hostile to the devil, arming us against the spiritual enemies of wickedness and of all lust, cutting us off even from those dearest to us for the name of God. But if you will not acknowledge John, you have our common teacher Paul, girding our loins with truth and the breastplate of righteousness, and shoeing us with the preparation of the gospel of peace, not of war, bidding us take up the shield of faith, with which we can quench all the fiery darts of the devil, and the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, “which is,” he says, “the word of God.” This is the sword which the Lord himself came to send on the earth, not peace. If he is your Christ, then he too is a warrior. If he is not a warrior, brandishing an allegorical sword, then the Creator's Christ too in the psalm could, without anything warlike, be girded figuratively with the sword of the Word, and to him the aforesaid bloom and grace of lips fit; the sword with which he was already then being girded upon the thigh in David, and which he was at some time to send on the earth. For this is what it says: “and stretch out, and prosper, and reign”: stretching out the Word into all the earth for the calling of all the nations; to prosper by the success of the faith by which he was received; and reigning from then on, in that he conquered death by the resurrection. “And your right hand,” it says, “will lead you wonderfully”: the power, that is, of spiritual grace, by which the knowledge of Christ is led forth. “Your arrows are sharp”: the precepts flying everywhere, and threats, and exposures of the heart, pricking and piercing every conscience. “Peoples will fall under you”: in worship, of course. Such is the Creator's Christ, mighty in war and bearing arms; so too now he receives spoils, not of Samaria only but of all the nations. Recognize figurative spoils too, when you have learned that his arms are allegorical. And so, since the Lord speaks figuratively in this way and the apostle writes so, we are not rash in using such interpretations, examples of which even our adversaries admit; and so the Christ who came will be Isaiah's precisely in so far as he was not a warrior, since he is not foretold as such by Isaiah.

So much, then, for the question of the flesh, and through it of the birth, and meanwhile of the one name Emmanuel. But as to the other names, and above all “Christ,” what will the opposing side reply? If with you the name of Christ is as common as that of God, so that it is fitting for the son of either god to be called Christ, just as either father is called God, a sure reason will stand against this argument. For the name “God,” as belonging by nature to divinity, can be shared with all to whom divinity is ascribed, even idols, as the apostle says: “For there are those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth.” But the name “Christ,” coming to him not from nature but from an arrangement, becomes the proper possession of him by whom the arrangement is found to have been made, and is not open to be shared with another god, least of all a rival who has his own arrangement, to which he will owe names of his own too. For what sort of thing is it that people who have devised different arrangements of two gods allow a partnership of names amid the discord of their arrangements, when no proof of two rival gods would be more at hand than if, in their arrangements, a difference of names were found as well? For no state of difference is marked except by distinct designations. When these are lacking, then if ever the Greek catachresis, the misuse of another's term, comes to the rescue. But with God, I think, nothing ought to be lacking, nor his arrangement to be furnished from another's. Who is this god, who claims names for his son too from the Creator, names not merely belonging to another but old and commonplace, which even so would not suit a new and unknown god? How, finally, does he teach that a new patch is not sewn onto an old garment, nor new wine entrusted to old wineskins, when he himself is sewn onto and put into old names? How does he cut the gospel off from the law, when he is clothed in the whole law, namely in the name of Christ? Who prevented him from being called something else, since he preached something else and came from somewhere else, when for this very reason he did not take on the reality of a body, lest he be believed to be the Creator's Christ? It was futile for him to refuse to seem to be the one whose name he chose to bear, since even if he had truly had a body, he would all the more not have seemed the Creator's Christ if he had not been so called. But as it is, he rejects the substance whose name he took, though he would even prove the substance from the name. For if “Christ” means “anointed,” and to be anointed is certainly something that happens to a body, one who had no body could not be anointed at all; and one who could not be anointed at all could in no way be called Christ. It is another matter if he affected a phantom of the name too. “But how,” he says, “could he creep into the faith of the Jews except through a name customary and familiar among them?” You describe an inconstant or crafty god: to advance anything by deceiving is a plan either of distrust or of malice. The false prophets acted far more freely and simply, coming in the name of their own god against the Creator. But I do not find that this plan worked either, since they more readily believed him to be either their own Christ, or rather some deceiver, than the Christ of another god, as the gospel will prove.

Now, if he snatched up the name of Christ as a petty thief snatches a gift-basket, why did he also wish to be called Jesus, a name not so much looked for among the Jews? For if we, having by God's grace attained an understanding of his mysteries, recognize that this name too was destined for Christ, it does not follow that the matter will be known to the Jews as well, from whom wisdom has been taken away. Indeed, to this day they hope for a Christ, not a Jesus, and they interpret Elijah as the Christ rather than Jesus. Why then did he also come in that name in which the Christ was not presumed to come? He could have come in that name alone which alone was presumed. But when he mixed the two, the expected and the unexpected, both his plans are defeated. For if he was called Christ in order to creep in for the time being as though he were the Creator's, the name Jesus is against it, because Jesus was not expected in the Creator's Christ; or if he was called Jesus to be taken for another's, the name Christ does not allow it, because a Christ belonging to anyone but the Creator was not expected. Which of these can stand, I do not know. But both will stand in the Creator's Christ, in whom the name Jesus is also found. “How?” you say. Learn this too with your partners in error, the Jews. When Hoshea son of Nun was appointed successor to Moses, he is certainly changed from his former name and begins to be called Jesus. “Certainly,” you say. This we say was first a figure of what was to come. For since Jesus Christ was to lead the second people (which we are, born in the deserts of the world) into the land of promise flowing with milk and honey, that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nothing is sweeter; and since this was to come about not through Moses, that is, not through the discipline of the law, but through Jesus, that is, through the grace of the gospel, when we had been circumcised with a knife of stone, that is, with the precepts of Christ (for the rock is Christ): therefore that man who was being prepared as an image of this mystery was also consecrated with the figure of the Lord's name, being named Jesus. Christ himself testified even then that this name was his own when he was speaking to Moses. For who was speaking, if not the Spirit of the Creator, who is Christ? When, then, he said to the people in his command: “Behold, I send my angel before your face, to guard you on the way and bring you into the land which I have prepared for you; attend to him and hear him, and do not disobey him; for he will not hide from you, since my name is upon him,” he called him an angel because of the greatness of the mighty works he was to perform, and because of the office of a prophet, announcing the divine will; but he called him Jesus because of the mystery of his own future name. For he confirmed as his own the name which he himself had given him, since he had commanded that from then on he be called not Angel nor Hoshea but Jesus. So if both names fit the Creator's Christ, then both are unfitting for a Christ not the Creator's, as is the rest of his course. In short, from here on a sure and just prescription must be set between us, necessary to both sides, by which it is determined that the Christ of another god ought to have nothing at all in common with the Creator's Christ. For you must maintain the difference just as we must oppose it, since neither will you be able to prove that another god's Christ has come unless you show him to be far different from the Creator's Christ, nor will we be able to claim him for the Creator unless we show him to be such as the Creator appointed. As for the names, we have now closed the matter: I claim Christ for myself, I defend Jesus as mine.

Let us compare the rest of his course with the Scriptures. Isaiah is at hand again: “We announced,” he says, “before him: like a little child, like a root in a thirsty land; and he has no form or glory; and we saw him, and he had no form or beauty, but his form was without honor, falling short of all men”; just as, above, the Father's voice to the Son: “As many will be astonished at you, so your form will be without glory from men.” Whatever that little body was, what bearing and appearance did it have? If without glory, if lowly, if without honor, he will be my Christ; for such was he announced to be in bearing and appearance. For even if in David he is in the bloom of beauty beyond the sons of men, it is in that allegorical state of spiritual grace, when he is girded with the sword of the Word, which is truly his form and beauty and glory. But in his bodily bearing, in the same prophet he is even a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and the scorn of the people. Nor were such things announced of his inner quality. For if the fullness of the Spirit rested in him, I recognize the rod from the root of Jesse: its flower will be my Christ, on whom, according to Isaiah, rested the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and piety, the spirit of the fear of God. For the totality of spiritual endowments fitted no man except Christ, who is likened to a flower because of the grace of the Spirit, and reckoned of the stock of Jesse through Mary, and so to be counted from it. But I press the point at issue: if you grant him a bent toward all humility, patience, and calm, then by these too he will be Isaiah's Christ: “a man under the stroke, and knowing how to bear weakness,” who “was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before the shearer did not open his mouth,” who “neither strove nor cried out, nor was his voice heard outside,” who “did not break the bruised reed,” that is, the shaken faith of the Jews, who “did not quench the burning flax,” that is, the momentary ardor of the nations; he cannot be other than the one who was foretold. His action too must be recognized by the rule of the Scriptures, distinguished, if I am not mistaken, by a twofold work: preaching and power. But I shall arrange both headings so that, since I have decided to sift Marcion's own gospel as well, the particular kinds of teachings and signs are put off to that point, as if to the matter in hand; here, however, let us complete in general the course we began, showing for the present that Christ is announced as a preacher through Isaiah: “For who among you,” he says, “fears God, let him hear the voice of his Son”; and likewise as a healer: “For he himself took away our weaknesses and carried our sicknesses.”

It is over his death, I suppose, that you plainly try to introduce a difference, denying that the suffering of the cross was foretold of the Creator's Christ, and arguing besides that it is not to be believed that the Creator exposed his Son to that kind of death which he himself had cursed: “Cursed,” he says, “is everyone who hangs on a tree.” But I rightly put off the meaning of this curse and treat only the foretelling of the cross, which is now the main question, since in other cases too the proof of the facts comes before the explanation. I shall first teach from the figures. And indeed this mystery, above all, had to be figured in prophecy: the more incredible it was, the more it would be a stumbling-block if it were foretold nakedly; and the more magnificent it was, the more it needed to be veiled, so that the difficulty of understanding might seek the grace of God. So first of all Isaac, when he was given up by his father as a sacrifice and himself carried the wood, was even then signifying Christ's death, who was surrendered by the Father as a victim and bore the wood of his own passion. Joseph too was to figure Christ, if only in this (not to delay my course), that he suffered persecution from his brothers because of God's favor, as Christ did from the Jews, his brothers according to the flesh. When he is blessed by his father in these words too: “His beauty is that of a bull; his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them he will toss the nations all together to the very end of the earth,” it was certainly not a one-horned rhinoceros or a two-horned minotaur that was meant, but Christ was signified in him: a bull because of his twofold dealing, fierce to some as judge, gentle to others as savior; whose horns would be the extremities of the cross. For in a ship's yard too, which is part of a cross, the ends are called horns, and the upright post in the middle is the unicorn. By this power of the cross, in short, and horned in this way, he both now tosses all nations through faith, lifting them from earth to heaven, and will then toss them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth. He will also be the bull elsewhere in the same Scripture, when Jacob spiritually invokes a curse on Simeon and Levi, that is, on the scribes and Pharisees (for their lineage is derived from them): “Simeon and Levi have accomplished iniquity out of their own choice,” that is, the choice by which they persecuted Christ; “let my soul not come into their council, and let my heart not rest in their assembly, because in their anger they killed men,” that is, the prophets, “and in their desire they hamstrung a bull,” that is, Christ, whom, after the murder of the prophets, they fastened to the cross and raged against his sinews with nails. Otherwise it would be pointless, after murders, to reproach them with the butchery of some ox. Next, Moses: why did he pray sitting down with hands outstretched only at the time when Joshua was fighting against Amalek, when in so alarming a situation he should rather have commended his prayer with bent knees, hands beating his breast, and face rolling on the ground? Unless it was that there, where the name of the Lord was fighting (the Lord who was one day to fight against the devil), the form of the cross too was necessary, by which Jesus would bring back the victory. Why again did the same Moses, after forbidding the likeness of anything whatever, set up a bronze serpent placed on a pole, in the posture of one hanging, as a saving sight? Was he not here too aiming at the power of the Lord's cross, by which the serpent, the devil, was exposed, and for everyone bitten by the spiritual snakes who yet looked upon it and believed in it, healing from the bites of sins, and thereafter salvation, was proclaimed?

Come now, if you have read in David, “The Lord has reigned from the tree,” I wait to see what you understand by it; unless perhaps you think some carpenter king of the Jews is meant, and not Christ, who, having overcome death by his passion on the tree, has reigned from then on. For if death reigned from Adam until Christ, why should Christ not be said to have reigned from the tree, since by dying on the tree of the cross he shut out the reign of death? So too Isaiah: “For a child is born to us” (what is new in that, if he does not speak of the Son of God?) “and is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder.” What king at all displays the emblem of his power on his shoulder, and not either a diadem on his head, or a scepter in his hand, or some mark of his own dress? But Christ Jesus alone, the new King of the new ages, of a new glory, has lifted up his power and his majesty on his shoulder, namely the cross, so that, according to the earlier prophecy, the Lord might reign from then on from the tree. This tree Jeremiah too suggests to you, foretelling what the Jews would say: “Come, let us cast wood into his bread,” that is, into his body. For so the Lord revealed in your gospel too, calling the bread his body, so that from this you may understand that he gave the figure of his body to the bread, whose body the prophet long before figured as bread, the Lord himself being later to interpret this mystery. If you still ask for the foretelling of the Lord's cross, the twenty-first psalm can now satisfy you, containing the whole passion of Christ, who even then sang of his glory: “They dug my hands and my feet,” which are the particular atrocities of the cross. And again, when he implores the Father's help: “Save me,” he says, “from the mouth of the lion,” namely of death, “and my lowliness from the horns of the unicorn,” that is, from the ends of the cross, as we showed above. Neither David himself suffered this cross, nor any king of the Jews; so do not think the passion of any other is prophesied but his who alone was so notably crucified by the people. Now even if heretical hardness rejects and laughs at all these interpretations, I will concede to it that no cross of Christ is signified by the Creator, since not even from this will it prove that the one who was crucified is another; unless perhaps it shows that this death of his was foretold by its own god, so that a difference of passions, and through that of persons too, may be established from a difference of foretellings. Besides, since not even its Christ was foretold, let alone his cross, the prophecy of his death alone is enough to point to my Christ. For since the manner of death was not stated, it could have come about through a cross too, and would then have to be assigned to another only if it had been foretold of another. Unless he will not have even the death of my Christ prophesied; all the more should he blush, if he announces that his own Christ died, whom he denies was born, but denies that mine is mortal, whom he confesses capable of birth. But I want to show the death and burial and resurrection of my Christ with one saying of Isaiah: “His burial has been taken away from the midst.” For neither would he have been buried unless he had died, nor would his burial have been taken away from the midst except through resurrection. Finally he added: “Therefore he will himself inherit many and will divide the spoils of many, because his soul was handed over to death.” For with the reason for this favor shown, namely for the wrong of the death that was to be healed, it is likewise shown that he would obtain these things after death, namely through resurrection.

It is enough so far to have run through the course of Christ for the present on these points. Proved to be such as he was announced, he ought not to be held to be other than the one who was announced as such; so that now, from this agreement between his history and the Creator's Scriptures, belief ought also to be restored to those things, on the prejudgment of the greater part, which are either brought into doubt or denied by the opposing view. We now build further on this the equally matching things from the Creator's Scriptures which were foretold as to come after Christ. For this arrangement too would not be found fulfilled if he had not come, after whom it was to take place. Look at all the nations emerging from then on out of the whirlpool of human error to God the Creator, to God the Christ; and deny, if you dare, that it was prophesied. But at once the Father's promise in the psalms will meet you: “You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession.” You cannot claim that David is his son rather than Christ, or that the ends of the earth were promised to David, who reigned within the one nation of the Jews, rather than to Christ, who has now taken the whole world by the faith of his gospel. So too through Isaiah: “Behold, I have given you as a covenant of the race, as a light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind,” namely of those who wander, “to release the bound from their chains,” that is, to free them from their sins, “and from the prison cell,” that is, of death, “those who sit in darkness,” namely of ignorance. If these things come about through Christ, they will have been prophesied of none other than the one through whom they come about. Likewise elsewhere: “Behold, I have set him as a witness to the nations, a ruler and commander to the nations; nations which do not know you will call upon you, and peoples will flee to you.” Nor will you interpret this of David, because he said first: “And I will make with you an everlasting covenant, the holy and sure things of David.” On the contrary, from this you should rather understand Christ, reckoned from David by descent according to the flesh, because of the lineage of the virgin Mary. For it is about this promise that an oath is sworn to David in the psalm: “Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne.” What womb is this? David's own? Certainly not, for David was not going to give birth. Nor his wife's either; for he would not have said, “of the fruit of your womb,” but rather “of the fruit of your wife's womb.” But by speaking of his own womb, it remains that he pointed to someone of his line, of whose womb the fruit would be the flesh of Christ, which blossomed from Mary's womb. And that is why he named only the fruit of the womb, as properly of the womb, as though of the womb alone and not also of a husband; and he referred the womb itself to David, the head of the line and father of the family. For since he could not assign the virgin's womb to a husband, he assigned it to the forefather. So the new covenant which is found today in Christ will be the one which the Creator was then promising, calling “the holy and sure things of David” what belonged to Christ, since Christ is from David. For the prophet Nathan too, in the second book of Kingdoms, makes a promise to David for his seed, “which will be,” he says, “from his own womb.” If you explain this simply of Solomon, you will make me laugh: David will seem to have given birth to Solomon! Is not Christ signified here too, the seed of David from that womb which would be from David, that is, Mary's? For Christ was the one who would rather build the house of God, namely a holy humanity, a better temple, in which the Spirit of God would dwell; and Christ rather than Solomon, the son of David, was to be the Son of God. Finally, the throne for ever and the kingdom for ever fit Christ rather than Solomon, a king for a time. And from Christ the mercy of God did not depart, while upon Solomon even the wrath of God came, after his luxury and idolatry, for Satan raised up against him an Edomite enemy. Since, then, none of these things fits Solomon but Christ, the rationale of our interpretations will be sure, the very outcome of events proving that they were foretold of Christ. And so in him will be the holy and sure things of David; him God set as a witness to the nations, not David; as ruler and commander of the nations, not David, who ruled over Israel alone. It is Christ whom the nations that did not know him call upon today, and to Christ the peoples flee today, whom they formerly did not know. What you see happening cannot be called future.

So too you cannot sustain that objection of yours to distinguish two Christs, as though the Jewish Christ were appointed by the Creator only to gather back the people from the dispersion, while yours was bestowed by the supremely good god to set free the whole human race; since, after all, the Christians of the Creator are found to be earlier than Marcion's, all peoples having been called into his kingdom from the time when God reigned from the tree, when there was as yet no Cerdo, let alone Marcion. But refuted about the calling of the nations, you now seek to turn it into proselytes who pass over from the nations to the Creator; whereas the proselytes, being of a different and distinct status, are named separately by the prophet (“Behold,” says Isaiah, “proselytes will come to you through me,” showing that the proselytes too would come to God through Christ), and the nations, which is what we are, likewise have their own designation, as hoping in Christ: “And in his name,” he says, “the nations will hope.” But the proselytes, whom you substitute in the prophecy of the nations, do not usually hope in the name of Christ but in the ordinance of Moses, from whom their instruction comes. The choosing of the nations, on the other hand, arose from the last days. Isaiah says in these very words: “And it will be in the last days that the mountain of the Lord will be manifest,” namely the majesty of God, “and the house of God on the tops of the mountains,” namely Christ, the universal temple of God in which God is worshiped, established over all the heights of virtues and powers; “and all nations will come to it, and many will go and say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will announce to us his way and we will walk in it; for from Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” This will be the way of the new law, the gospel, and of the new word, in Christ, no longer in Moses. “And he will judge among the nations,” namely concerning their error, “and will refute a great people,” first of all the Jews themselves and the proselytes, “and they will beat their swords into ploughs and their spears into sickles,” that is, they will turn the dispositions of harmful minds and hostile tongues, and of all malice and blasphemy, into pursuits of moderation and peace; “and nation will not take up sword against nation,” the sword of discord, that is, “and they will no longer learn to make war,” that is, to carry out enmities; so that here too you may learn that Christ was promised not as mighty in war but as bringing peace. Either deny that these things were prophesied, when they are seen before your eyes, or that they are fulfilled, when they are read; or if you deny neither, they will have been fulfilled in him of whom they were prophesied. For look further at the very entry and course of the calling into the nations, from the last days, as they approach God the Creator; not into proselytes, whose choosing belongs rather to the first days. For it was the apostles who brought in this faith.

You have the work of the apostles foretold too: “How timely are the feet of those who bring good news of peace, who bring good news of good things,” not of war or of evil. The psalm answers: “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the earth,” as they carried about the law that went forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, so that what is written might come to pass: “And those who were far from my righteousness have drawn near to my righteousness and truth.” When the apostles girded themselves for this business, did they renounce the elders, the rulers, and the priests of the Jews, or not? “Yes indeed,” he says, “as preachers of another god.” On the contrary, of that very same God whose Scripture they were at that time fulfilling: “Depart, depart,” cries Isaiah, “go out from there and touch nothing unclean” (namely, blasphemy against Christ); “go out from the midst of her” (the synagogue, of course); “be separated, you who carry the vessels of the Lord.” For already, according to what is written above, the Lord had revealed his holy arm, that is, Christ, by his power, before the nations, so that all nations and the ends of the earth might see the salvation that was from God. So too, departing from Judaism itself, when they exchanged the bonds and burdens of the law for the freedom of the gospel, they were carrying out the psalm: “Let us burst their bonds and cast their yoke from us”; certainly after “the nations raged and the peoples meditated vain things; the kings of the earth stood up and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.” What then did the apostles suffer? “Every iniquity of persecution,” you say, “at the hands of the Creator's men, of course, as adversaries of the one they preached.” And why does the Creator, if he was the adversary of Christ, not only foretell that his apostles would suffer this, but also reproach it? For he would neither foretell the course of another god, of whom, as you people will have it, he was ignorant, nor reproach what he had himself brought about: “See how the righteous man perishes, and no one takes it to heart, and righteous men are taken away, and no one notices; for the righteous man has been taken away from the face of injustice.” Who, if not Christ? “Come,” they say, “let us take away the righteous man, because he is useless to us.” So, stating beforehand and adding afterwards that Christ likewise suffered, he prophesied that his righteous ones would suffer the same, the apostles as well as all the faithful after them; sealed, namely, with that mark of which Ezekiel speaks: “The Lord says to me: Pass through the midst of the gate, in the midst of Jerusalem, and put the sign Tau on the foreheads of the men.” For this very letter, the Greek Tau, our T, is the form of the cross, which he foretold would be on our foreheads in the true and catholic Jerusalem, in which the twenty-first psalm, speaking in the person of Christ himself to the Father, sings that Christ's brothers, the sons of God, would give glory to God: “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the midst of the church I will sing a hymn to you” (for what was to be done today in his name and Spirit he rightly foretold as to be done by himself); and a little further on: “From you is my praise in the great church”; and in the sixty-seventh: “In the churches bless the Lord God”; so that the prophecy of Micah might likewise agree: “My will is not in you, says the Lord, and I will not accept your sacrifices; for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is glorified among the nations, and in every place a sacrifice is offered to my name, a pure sacrifice,” namely the rendering of glory, blessing, praise, and hymns. Since all these things are found in your church too, the sealing of foreheads, the sacraments of the churches, and the purity of the sacrifices, you ought now to burst out and say that the Spirit of the Creator prophesied of your Christ.

Now, since along with the Jews you deny that their Christ has come, consider also their own end, which they were foretold to suffer after Christ because of the impiety with which they both despised and killed him. For first, from the day when, according to Isaiah, man threw away his abominations of gold and silver, which they made to worship vain and harmful things, that is, from the time when the human race, the truth having been made clear through Christ, threw away its idols, see whether what follows has not been fulfilled. For “the Lord of Hosts took away from Judea and from Jerusalem,” among other things, “both the prophet and the wise master builder,” namely the Holy Spirit, who builds the church, that is, the temple and house and city of God. For from then on the grace of God ceased among them, and “the clouds were commanded not to rain showers on the vineyard of Sorek,” that is, the heavenly benefits were commanded not to come to the house of Israel. For it had produced thorns, with which it had crowned the Lord, and not righteousness but an outcry, by which it had forced him onto the cross. And so, the dews of spiritual gifts being withdrawn, “the law and the prophets were until John.” Then, when through their persistent fury the name of the Lord was blasphemed through them, as it is written, “Because of you my name is blasphemed among the nations” (for the slander began with them), and when they had not understood the intervening time from Tiberius to Vespasian as given for repentance, “their land was made desolate, their cities burned with fire, strangers devour their country before their eyes; the daughter of Zion is left like a watchtower in a vineyard or a hut in a cucumber field,” ever since, that is, “Israel did not know the Lord and the people did not understand him,” but “forsook him and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” So too the conditional threat of the sword, “If you are unwilling and do not hear me, the sword will devour you,” will prove that it was Christ, by not hearing whom they perished; who also in the fifty-eighth psalm asks the Father to scatter them, “Scatter them in your power”; who again, through Isaiah, concluding his speech about their burning, says, “Because of me these things have happened to you; you will lie down in anguish.” Quite pointless, if they suffered these things not because of him who had declared they would suffer because of him, but because of the Christ of another god. And yet, I say, you people claim that the Christ of another god was driven to the cross by the Creator's virtues and powers, as by rivals. But see, he is shown to be avenged by the Creator: “And the worst were given for his burial,” namely those who had asserted that it had been stolen, “and the rich for his death,” namely those who had bought the betrayal from Judas and from the soldiers false testimony that the body had been stolen. So either these things did not befall the Jews because of him (but you are refuted by the agreement of the sense of the Scriptures with the outcome of events and the order of the times), or, if they befell them because of him, the Creator could only avenge his own Christ, since he would rather have rewarded the Jews if they had killed his adversary. Certainly, if the Creator's Christ has not yet come, because of whom they are foretold to suffer these things, then they will suffer them when he comes. And where then will be the daughter of Zion to be left forsaken, when today there is none? Where the cities to be burned, which are already in ruins? Where the scattering of the nation, which is already in exile? Give back to Judea the state in which the Creator's Christ may find it, and then contend that another has come. And again, what sort of thing is it that the Creator let into his heaven one whom he was going to kill on his earth, the more honorable and glorious region of his kingdom having been violated, his very court and citadel trampled? Or was this rather what he aimed at? Plainly a jealous God. Yet he won. Blush, you who believe in a defeated god! What will you hope for from one who could not protect himself? For either he was overwhelmed through weakness by the Creator's powers and men, or through malice, to fasten so great a crime on them by his forbearance.

“Rather,” you say, “what I hope for from him is something that itself serves as evidence of the difference: the kingdom of God, an eternal and heavenly possession. But your Christ promises the Jews their former state through the restoration of their land, and after life has run its course, refreshment in Abraham's bosom among the dead below.” O most good God, if when appeased he gives back what he had taken away when angry! O your god, who both strikes and heals, creates evils and makes peace! O a god merciful even as far as the underworld! But of Abraham's bosom in its own time. As for the restoration of Judea, which the Jews themselves hope for just as it is described, led on by the names of places and regions, how an allegorical interpretation applies spiritually to Christ and the church, its condition and its fruit, would take long to pursue, and has been set out in another work, which we entitle On the Hope of the Faithful; and at present it is idle for this reason too, that the question is not about an earthly but about a heavenly promise. For we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us on earth, but before heaven, and in another state: namely after the resurrection, for a thousand years, in the city of divine workmanship, Jerusalem, brought down from heaven, which the apostle too designates as “our mother above”; and when he declares that our politeuma, that is, our citizenship, is in heaven, he certainly assigns it to some heavenly city. This city Ezekiel knew, the apostle John saw, and the word of the New Prophecy, which belongs to our faith, bears witness to it, so that it even foretold that an image of the city would be seen as a sign before its manifestation. This was in fact fulfilled very recently during the eastern expedition. For it is established, even by heathen witnesses, that in Judea for forty days a city hung from the sky in the early morning hours, the whole appearance of its walls fading as the day advanced, and at other times, close at hand, there was none. This city, we say, has been provided by God for receiving the saints at their resurrection and refreshing them with an abundance of all goods, spiritual ones of course, in compensation for those which we have either despised or lost in the world; since it is both just and worthy of God that his servants should rejoice there too, where they were also afflicted for his name. This is the plan of the kingdom beneath heaven. After its thousand years, within which period the resurrection of the saints is completed, as they rise sooner or later according to their merits, then, when the destruction of the world and the conflagration of judgment have taken place, we shall be changed in an instant into angelic substance, namely by that putting on of incorruption over us, and be transferred into the heavenly kingdom. This kingdom is now being discussed as though it were not foretold by the Creator, and so proved a Christ of another god, by whom it was first and alone revealed. Learn now, then, both that it was foretold by the Creator and that, even without foretelling, it is to be believed of the Creator. What do you think? When the seed of Abraham, after the first promise in which it is promised to be like the multitude of the sand, is also destined to be like the stars, are these not tokens of both an earthly and a heavenly arrangement? When Isaac, blessing his son Jacob, says, “May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth,” are these not examples of both kinds of bounty? Indeed, the very structure of that blessing must be noted here too. For with Jacob, who is a figure of the later and preferred people, that is, of us, the first promise is of heavenly dew, the second of earthly fatness. For we are first invited to heavenly things when we are torn away from the world, and so are found afterwards to obtain earthly things as well. And your gospel too has: “Seek first the kingdom of God, and these things will be added to you.” But to Esau he puts the earthly blessing first and adds the heavenly, saying, “Your dwelling will be of the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven.” For the arrangement of the Jews, in Esau, the elder by birth but later in affection of the sons, first steeped in earthly goods through the law, is afterwards led to heavenly things by believing through the gospel. And when Jacob dreams of a ladder fixed on the earth up to heaven, and angels, some ascending and some descending, and the Lord leaning upon it from above, shall we be rash, perhaps, to interpret this ladder as showing the way to heaven, by which some arrive and from which others fall … that the judgment of the Lord is set? And why, when he woke up and was first struck with awe at the place, does he turn to interpreting the dream? For when he had said, “How terrible is this place!” he says, “This is nothing else but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” For he had seen Christ the Lord, who is the temple of God and also the gate through whom heaven is entered. And certainly he would not have named a gate of heaven if heaven is not entered with the Creator. But there is a gate that receives and leads on, and a way already paved by Christ, of whom Amos says, “who builds his ascent into heaven,” certainly not for himself alone, but also for his own, who will be with him. “For you will surround yourself with them,” he says, “like the ornament of a bride.” So the Spirit marvels at those who by that ascent are making for the heavenly kingdoms, saying, “They fly like kites, they fly like clouds, and like young doves to me,” that is, simply, as doves. “For we shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord,” according to the apostle (the Son of Man, namely, coming in the clouds, according to Daniel), “and so we shall always be with the Lord,” both on earth and in heaven, the Lord who, because of those ungrateful for both promises, calls even the elements themselves to witness: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth.” And for my part, even if Scripture had not so often stretched out to me the hand of heavenly hope, I would have a sufficient prejudgment in favor of this promise too, in that I already hold earthly grace; I would expect something from heaven as well from the God of heaven as of earth. So I would believe that the Christ who promises higher things belongs to him who had promised lower ones; who had made proofs of the greater from the lesser; who had reserved for Christ alone the proclamation of this perhaps unheard-of kingdom, so that earthly glory was announced through his servants, but the heavenly through the Lord himself. But you argue from this too for another Christ, because he announces a new kingdom. First you must bring forward some example of his bounty, so that I may not rightly doubt the trustworthiness of so great a promise, which I hope for (for I have learned it); or rather, before all else, you must prove that he whom you proclaim as promising heavenly things has some heaven. As it is, you invite me to dinner and do not show me the house; you allege a kingdom and do not point out the palace. Does your Christ promise a heavenly kingdom without having a heaven, just as he presented himself as a man without having flesh? O phantom through and through! O great conjuring trick, even of the promise!

Every opinion and every contrivance of the impious and sacrilegious Marcion we now challenge before his gospel itself, which he made his own by tampering with it. And to establish credit for it, he devised a sort of dowry for it: a work called Antitheses from its oppositions of contrary statements, forced into separating the law and the gospel, by which, dividing two gods, as different as one belonging to one instrument (or, as it is more usual to say, testament) and the other to the other, he might then champion the gospel too as one to be believed according to the Antitheses. But I would have cut these down in a separate engagement at close quarters, that is, objection by objection of the man from Pontus, were it not much more convenient to beat them back within and together with the gospel whose case they plead. And yet it is so easy to meet them by prescription that I actually accept them, count them valid, and say they are on our side, so that they may blush all the more at their author's blindness: they are now our Antitheses against Marcion. And so I confess that one order ran its course in the old arrangement under the Creator, and another in the new under Christ. I do not deny a difference in the records of speech, the precepts of virtue, and the disciplines of the law, provided that the whole difference applies to one and the same God, namely him by whom it is established that it was arranged, as it was also foretold. Long ago Isaiah proclaims that the law would go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem: certainly another law and another word. “In short,” he says, “he will judge among the nations and will convict a very great people,” not of the one nation of the Jews, namely, but of the nations, who by the new law of the gospel and the new word of the apostles are judged and convicted in their own hearts of their former error as soon as they believe; and from then on they beat their swords into ploughs and their hunting spears (for zibinae are a kind of hunting spear) into sickles, that is, they turn minds once fierce and savage into upright dispositions that work to produce good fruit. And again: “Hear me, hear me, my people, and you kings, give ear to me; for a law will go forth from me, and my judgment for a light of the nations,” by which he had judged and decreed that the nations too were to be enlightened by the law and word of the gospel. This too will be the law in David, blameless because perfect, “converting the soul,” from idols to God, of course. This too will be the word of which the same Isaiah says: “For the Lord will make a cut-short word on the earth.” For the new testament is abridged, and freed from the ragged burdens of the law. But why say more, when renewal is foretold by the Creator through the same prophet more plainly and more clearly than light itself? “Do not remember the former things, and do not consider the things of old” (the old have passed away, new things are arising); “behold, I make new things, which will now arise.” Likewise through Jeremiah: “Break up for yourselves new fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns; and be circumcised in the foreskin of your heart”; and elsewhere: “Behold, the day will come, says the Lord, and I will accomplish for the house of Jacob and the house of Judah a new covenant, not according to the covenant which I arranged for their fathers in the day when I took hold of their arrangement to lead them out of the land of Egypt.” Thus he shows that the former covenant was temporary, in showing it changeable and in promising an eternal one for the future. For through Isaiah he says: “Hear me, and you will live, and I will arrange for you an eternal covenant,” adding, “the holy and sure things of David,” to show that this covenant would run its course in Christ, of the line of David by Mary's descent, whom he also foretold figuratively in the rod that would come forth from the root of Jesse. If, then, he said that other laws, other words, and new arrangements of covenants would come from the Creator, so that he appointed other, better offices even of the sacrifices themselves, and those among the nations, as Malachi says: “My will is not in you, says the Lord, and I will not accept your sacrifices from your hands, for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among the nations, and in every place a sacrifice is offered to my name, and a pure sacrifice,” namely simple prayer from a pure conscience; then every change that comes from renewal must enter into difference from the things of which it is made, and from difference into contrariety. For as nothing is changed that is not different, so nothing is different that is not contrary. Therefore the contrariety arising from difference will be assigned to the same one to whom the change arising from renewal belonged. He who arranged the change also instituted the difference; he who foretold the renewal also announced the contrariety beforehand. Why do you interpret a difference in things as a distinction of powers? Why do you twist against the Creator the antitheses of examples, which you can recognize in his own feelings and dispositions too? “I will strike,” he says, “and I will heal; I will kill,” he says, “and I will make alive,” creating evils and making peace; on which ground you are even accustomed to reproach him with the name of fickleness and inconstancy, forbidding what he commands and commanding what he forbids. Why then have you not reckoned up antitheses in the natural works of the Creator, who is always contrary to himself? Could you not at least consider the world, which, unless I am mistaken, even among the people of Pontus is built out of the differences of substances rivaling one another? You ought first, then, to have defined one god of light and another of darkness, so that you could thus have asserted one god of the law and another of the gospel. But the matter has been prejudged from what is plain: he whose works and designs consist of antitheses has his mysteries consist in the same form.

You have this reply to the Antitheses, dispatched by us. I now pass on to the demonstration of the gospel, not the Jewish one, of course, but the Pontic one, adulterated in the meantime, laying down beforehand the order we are taking up. We lay down first that the gospel instrument has apostles as its authors, on whom this task of promulgating the gospel was laid by the Lord himself; and if also apostolic men, then not alone but with the apostles, since the preaching of disciples could be made suspect of seeking glory if the authority of the masters did not stand by it, or rather the authority of Christ, which made the apostles masters. In short, of the apostles, John and Matthew instill faith in us; of apostolic men, Luke and Mark renew it, beginning from the same rules as regards the one God the Creator and his Christ, born of a virgin, the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Never mind if the arrangement of their narratives varied, provided there is agreement on the essential of the faith, on which there is no agreement with Marcion. Marcion, on the other hand, ascribes no author to his gospel, his own, that is; as if he might not have been allowed to forge a title too, he who thought it no crime to overturn the body of the work itself. And I could plant my foot here at once, contending that a work should not be acknowledged which does not lift up its head, which displays no constancy, which promises no credit through a full title and the due declaration of its author. But we prefer to engage on every point, and we do not conceal what can be understood from our own side. For of those commentators whom we have, Marcion seems to have chosen Luke to cut up. Now Luke was not an apostle but an apostolic man, not a master but a disciple, certainly less than a master, and certainly later by as much as he was the follower of a later apostle, Paul without doubt; so that even if Marcion had brought in his gospel under the name of Paul himself, the single instrument, without the support of those who went before, would not suffice for belief. For that gospel too would be required which Paul found, to which he gave his faith, with which he was soon eager that his own should agree; since it was for this reason that he went up to Jerusalem to know and consult the apostles, lest perhaps he had run in vain, that is, lest he had not believed and was not preaching the gospel in agreement with them. Finally, when he had conferred with the authorities and agreed about the rule of faith, they joined right hands and from then on divided the duties of preaching, they to the Jews, Paul to the Jews and to the nations. If, then, Luke's very enlightener desired the authority of those who went before for his faith and preaching, how much more may I demand for Luke's gospel the authority that was necessary for his master's gospel?

It is another matter if, according to Marcion, the mystery of the Christian religion began with Luke's discipleship. But if it runs back earlier, it certainly had an authentic apparatus through which it reached Luke, with whose testimony standing by, Luke too could be admitted. But Marcion, having come upon Paul's letter to the Galatians, in which he rebukes even the apostles themselves for not walking with a straight foot according to the truth of the gospel, and at the same time accuses certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ, strives to destroy the standing of those gospels which are published as their own and under the name of apostles, or of apostolic men too, in order, that is, to confer on his own the credit which he takes from them. Now even if Peter and John and James, who were reputed to be pillars, were rebuked, the reason is plain: they seemed to vary their company out of regard for persons. And yet, since Paul himself became all things to all men in order to win all, Peter too could have had this in view in acting somewhat otherwise than he taught. Likewise, if false apostles had also crept in, their character too is stated: they insisted on circumcision and Jewish pride. So they were censured by Paul not for their preaching but for their conduct, and he would equally have censured them if they had erred at all about God the Creator or his Christ. Each point, then, must be distinguished. If Marcion complains that the apostles are held suspect of collusion and pretense to the point of corrupting the gospel, he is now accusing Christ, by accusing those whom Christ chose. But if the apostles did hand on the gospel whole, and were rebuked only for inconsistency in their company, while the false apostles tampered with their truth, and our gospels were compiled from that source, what will that genuine instrument of the apostles be that did not suffer adulterers? What was it that enlightened Paul, and through him Luke? But if it was so utterly destroyed as to be blotted out by a sort of deluge, a flood of forgers, then Marcion does not have the true one either. Or if what Marcion alone has will be the true one, that is, the apostles', how does it agree with ours, which is ascribed not to the apostles but to Luke? Or if what Marcion uses is not to be assigned straightaway to Luke because it agrees with ours (ours being adulterated, as he says, in its title as well), but is the apostles', then ours too, which agrees with it, is equally the apostles', though adulterated in its title too.

The rope of contention, then, must be pulled, swaying with equal effort on either side. I say mine is true; Marcion says his. I affirm that Marcion's is adulterated; Marcion says mine is. Who will decide between us, except the reckoning of time, which assigns authority to what is found to be older and prejudges corruption against what is shown to be later? For in so far as falsehood is a corruption of the truth, to that extent the truth must precede the falsehood. The thing will come before what is done to it, and the material before its imitation. Otherwise, how absurd that, if we prove ours older and Marcion's later, ours should seem false before it had the truth as its material, and Marcion's be believed to have suffered imitation from ours before it was even published; and finally, that what is later should be thought the truer, after so many and such great works and records of the Christian religion had been published to the world, which certainly could not have been published without the truth of the gospel, that is, before the truth of the gospel. As regards, then, the gospel of Luke for the present, in so far as our common possession of it is disputed between us and Marcion as to its truth, what agrees with our text is so much older than Marcion's that Marcion himself once believed it, when in the first warmth of his faith he gave money to the catholic church, which was soon thrown back along with himself, after he had fallen away from our truth into his heresy. What now if the Marcionites deny that his first faith was with us, in the face of his own letter too? What if they do not acknowledge the letter either? Certainly they not only admit that the Antitheses are Marcion's, but hold them up. From these the proof is enough for me. For if the gospel which among us is ascribed to Luke (we shall see whether among Marcion too) is the very one that Marcion attacks through his Antitheses as interpolated by the protectors of Judaism, to merge it with the law and the prophets so that they might fashion Christ from them as well, he certainly could not have attacked anything but what he had found. No one censures beforehand things to come that he does not know will come. Correction does not come before the fault. A corrector indeed of the gospel, which had been overturned from the times of Tiberius to those of the Antonines, Marcion appeared, alone and first, awaited so long by Christ, who by now regretted having hastened to send out the apostles ahead without Marcion's protection! Except that heresy is the business of human rashness, not divine authority; it always corrects the gospels in this way, by corrupting them. For even if Marcion is a disciple, he is not above his master; if Marcion is an apostle, “whether it was I,” says Paul, “or they, so we preach”; if Marcion is a prophet, “the spirits of the prophets will be subject to the prophets, for they are not of confusion but of peace”; even if Marcion is an angel, he is to be called anathema sooner than an evangelist, since he preached a different gospel. So while he corrects, he confirms both: that ours is earlier, since he corrects what he found; and that that one is later which, by setting it up out of the correction of ours, he made his own and new.

In sum: if it is established that what is earlier is truer, that what is from the beginning is earlier, and that what is from the apostles is from the beginning, it will likewise be established that what has been held sacred among the churches of the apostles is what was handed down by the apostles. Let us see what milk the Corinthians drank from Paul; to what rule the Galatians were brought back for correction; what the Philippians, Thessalonians, and Ephesians read; what the Romans too, close at hand, give voice to, to whom both Peter and Paul left the gospel sealed with their own blood as well. We also have the churches nurtured by John. For even if Marcion rejects his Apocalypse, the succession of bishops, traced back to its origin, will rest on John as its founder. So too the pedigree of the other churches is recognized. I say, therefore, that among them, and not only among the apostolic churches but among all those that are joined with them in the fellowship of the sacrament, that gospel of Luke which we are at this moment defending has stood from the beginning of its publication; whereas Marcion's is not even known to most of them, and known to none without being condemned for that very reason. That one too, plainly, has churches, but its own, as late as they are adulterous; and if you look for their lineage, you will more easily find it apostate than apostolic, with Marcion as founder or someone from Marcion's swarm. Wasps make combs too; Marcionites make churches too. The same authority of the apostolic churches will also support the other gospels, which likewise we have through them and in agreement with them: I mean John's and Matthew's, though what Mark published may also be affirmed to be Peter's, whose interpreter Mark was. For people usually ascribe Luke's compilation to Paul as well; and it is proper that what disciples published should be regarded as their masters'. So Marcion must be pressed about these too: why, leaving them aside, he fastened on Luke instead, as if these too had not been in the churches from the beginning, just as Luke's was. Indeed, it is more credible that these were there from the beginning, as being earlier, since apostolic, as dedicated together with the churches themselves. Besides, what sort of thing would it be, if the apostles published nothing, that their disciples should rather have published, who could not even have come to be disciples without some teaching from their masters? So, since it is established that these too were in the churches, why did Marcion not touch these too, either to correct them if adulterated, or to acknowledge them if intact? For it would be fitting that those who were perverting the gospel should rather take care to pervert those whose authority they knew to be more widely received. That is why there were false apostles too: because they imitated the apostles by falsehood. So in so far as he would have corrected what needed correcting, had it been corrupted, to that extent he confirmed that what he did not think needed correcting was not corrupted. In short, he corrected what he judged corrupted; but not even this rightly, because it was not corrupted. For if the apostolic gospels have come down intact, and Luke's, as we have it, agrees so well with their rule that it remains with them in the churches, then it is established that Luke's too came down intact until the sacrilege of Marcion. Indeed, where Marcion laid hands on it, then it became different from and a rival to the apostolic gospels. I will therefore give his disciples some advice: either let them convert those gospels too, however late, to the form of their own … so that it may seem to agree with the apostolic ones (for they are reshaping it daily, as they are daily refuted by us); or let them blush for their master, who is exposed either way, since he now passes over the truth of the gospel knowingly and now overturns it shamelessly. These are more or less the short arguments we use when we are engaged on behalf of the faith of the gospel against heretics, maintaining both the order of time, which rules against the lateness of forgers, and the authority of the churches, which supports the tradition of the apostles; because the truth must precede the falsehood, and proceed from those by whom it was handed down.

But from here we take another step, challenging Marcion's gospel itself, as we professed, so as to prove in this way too that it has been adulterated. For certainly the whole of what he labored at, even in setting up the Antitheses in advance, is directed to this end: that, establishing a difference between the Old and the New Testament, he might likewise establish his Christ as separate from the Creator, as belonging to another god, as foreign to the law and the prophets. Certainly it was for this reason that he erased whatever was contrary to his opinion and agreed with the Creator, as having been woven in by the Creator's champions, and kept what suited his opinion. These we shall meet, these we shall embrace, if they turn out to be rather on our side, if they strike down Marcion's presumption; then it will be established that the other passages too were erased by the same fault of heretical blindness by which these were kept. Such will be the aim and plan of our little work, under the condition, of course, that has been agreed on both sides. Marcion lays down that there is one Christ who was revealed in the time of Tiberius by a god formerly unknown, for the salvation of all nations, and another who was appointed by God the Creator for the restoration of the Jewish state, and who is to come at some time. Between these he cuts a great and total difference, as great as between the just and the good, between the law and the gospel, between Judaism and Christianity. From this will come our prescription too, by which we fix it that the Christ of another god ought to have nothing in common with the Creator; and that on the other hand he must be declared the Creator's if he has administered his arrangements, fulfilled his prophecies, supported his laws, made present his promises, restored his mighty works, re-expressed his judgments, and represented his character and attributes. Remember this agreement and this prescription everywhere, I beg you, reader, and begin to discern whether it is Marcion's Christ or the Creator's.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, he lays it down, Christ came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee: from the Creator's heaven, of course, into which he had first come down from his own. Would it not have been proper order, then, that he should first be described as coming down from his own heaven into the Creator's? For why should I not criticize these things too, which do not fulfill the credibility of an orderly narrative, which always fails in a lie? Let what we have already dealt with elsewhere be said plainly once more: whether, coming down through the Creator's realm, and indeed against him, he could have been let in by him and passed on from there to the earth, which was equally his. But now I demand the rest of the order of his descent too, holding that he came down. Let it pass, if anywhere it is written that he “appeared.” To appear smacks of a sudden and unexpected sight, which strikes the eyes once upon what has appeared without delay; but to have come down is seen while it is happening, and brings the fact under the eyes. It also implies an order, and so compels us to ask in what form, with what equipage, with what speed or restraint, and even at what time of day or night he came down; besides, who saw him coming down, who reported it, who vouched for the fact, which would not easily be believed even from one who vouched for it. It is shameful, in short, that Romulus had Proculus to affirm his ascent into heaven, while the Christ of God did not find anyone to announce his descent from heaven … as if the one did not ascend by the same ladder of lies by which the other came down. And what had he to do with Galilee, if he was not the Creator's, for whom this region was destined as he entered on his preaching, as Isaiah says: “Drink this first, act quickly, land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, and you others who inhabit the seacoast and the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations: you people who sit in darkness, see a great light; you who inhabit the land, sitting in the shadow of death, a light has risen upon you”? And it is well that Marcion's god too is claimed as the enlightener of the nations; all the more should he, even if he came down from heaven, have come down to Pontus rather than to Galilee. But since both the place and the work of enlightening agree with the prophecy in Christ, we begin to recognize him already as the one prophesied, showing at his first entry that he had come not to dissolve the law and the prophets but rather to fulfill them. This Marcion erased as an addition. But in vain will he deny that Christ said what he at once in part did. For he meanwhile fulfilled the prophecy about the place. From heaven, at once, to the synagogue. As the saying goes, “Do what we came for.” Marcion, take this out of the gospel as well: “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and, “It is not right to take the children's bread and give it to the dogs,” so that Christ may not seem to be Israel's. Deeds are enough for me in place of words. Take away the sayings of my Christ: the facts will speak. Look, he comes to the synagogue: surely to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Look, he offers the bread of his teaching to the Israelites first: surely as preferring them as sons. Look, he does not yet share it with others: surely as passing them by as dogs. But to whom would he rather have given it than to strangers to the Creator, if he had not himself been above all the Creator's? And yet how could one so sudden, so unknown, be admitted to the synagogue, one about whom no one was yet certain of his tribe, his people, his house, or finally his registration in Augustus's census, which the Roman archives keep as the most faithful witness to the Lord's birth? They certainly remembered that unless they knew him to be circumcised he was not to be admitted into the holy of holies. And even if the synagogue could be entered freely, it was not so for teaching, except by one well known, examined, and long approved for this very purpose, or recommended from elsewhere with this office. But all were astonished at his teaching. Of course, “for his word,” it says, “was with authority,” not because he taught against the law and the prophets. For the divine speech certainly showed both power and grace, building up rather than destroying the substance of the law and the prophets. Otherwise they would not have been astonished but horrified; they would not have wondered but at once have turned away from a destroyer of the law and the prophets, and above all from the preacher of another god, since he could not have taught against the law and the prophets, and on this account against the Creator, without first professing a different and rival divinity. Since, then, Scripture indicates nothing of the kind, except that the power and authority of his word alone were the object of wonder, it more readily shows that he taught in accordance with the Creator, because it did not deny it, than against the Creator, because it did not indicate it. And so he must either be recognized as belonging to the one according to whom he taught, or be judged a traitor if he taught according to the one against whom he had come. In the same place the spirit of a demon cries out: “What have we to do with you, Jesus? You have come to destroy us. I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Here I shall not reopen the question whether this name too suited one who ought not even to be called Christ if he was not the Creator's (the names have been argued elsewhere already); but I now dispute how the demon knew that he was called by this name, when no foretelling about him had ever been sent out beforehand by a god unknown and up to that time mute, of whom he could not even attest him to be the Holy One, as being of a god unknown even to his own Creator. What had he yet brought forth of a new divinity, by which he could be understood as the Holy One of another god? Only that he had entered the synagogue, and had not even done anything by word against the Creator! Just as, then, he could in no way recognize as Jesus and the Holy One of God one whom he did not know, so he recognized one whom he knew. For he remembered both that the prophet had foretold the Holy One of God, and that the name Jesus was the name of the Lord in the son of Nun. These things he had also caught from the angel, according to our gospel: “Therefore that which will be born in you will be called holy, the Son of God,” and, “you shall call his name Jesus.” Besides, he certainly had some sense of the Lord's arrangement, demon though he was, rather than of a foreign one not yet well known. For he said first, “What have we to do with you, Jesus?” not as to a stranger, but to one to whom the spirits of the Creator belong. For he did not say, “What have you to do with us?” but, “What have we to do with you?”, lamenting himself and reproaching his lot, which he already saw, as he adds: “You have come to destroy us.” So he had recognized Jesus as the Son of the God who judges and avenges and, so to speak, is severe, not of that supremely good one who knows neither how to destroy nor how to punish. To what end have we set out this passage? To show that Jesus was recognized by the demon, and confirmed by himself, as none other than the Creator's. “But,” you say, “Jesus rebuked him.” Of course, as spiteful and impudent even in his confession, as flattering wickedly, as if this were the highest glory of Christ, that he had come for the destruction of demons and not rather for the salvation of men; he who wished his disciples to glory not in the subjection of spirits but in the whiteness of salvation. Or why did he rebuke him? If as having lied entirely, then he was not Jesus nor the Holy One of God at all. If as having lied in part, because he had thought him to be Jesus and the Holy One of God, but the Creator's, he rebuked him most unjustly for thinking what he knew should be thought, and for not supposing what he did not know should be supposed: another Jesus, the Holy One of another god. But if the rebuke has no more likely standing than the one we give it, then the demon told no lie, and was not rebuked for a lie; for he himself was Jesus, and the demon could not have recognized any other; and Jesus confirmed the one whom the demon had recognized, in not rebuking the demon for a lie.

The Creator's Christ was to be called a Nazarene according to prophecy. That is why the Jews call us by that very name, Nazarenes, because of him. For we are those of whom it is written, “The Nazirites were made whiter than snow,” we, that is, who were formerly livid with the stains of sin and blackened with the darkness of ignorance. And the title of Nazarene was to suit Christ from the hiding-place of his infancy, in which he went down to Nazareth to avoid Archelaus, the son of Herod. I have not left this out, because Marcion's Christ ought to have renounced all dealings even with the places familiar to the Creator's Christ, when he had so many towns of Judea not so made over to the Creator's Christ by the prophets. But he will be the Christ of the prophets wherever he is found in accordance with the prophets. And yet at Nazareth too he is not recorded to have preached anything new, while he is reported to have been thrown out for another reason, one proverb. Here, noticing that hands were laid on him for the first time, I must settle in advance the question of his bodily substance: that he cannot be believed a phantom who submitted to contact, and violent contact at that, being seized, taken hold of, and dragged to the very edge of the cliff. For even if he escaped through the midst of them, he had already experienced their force and was afterwards let go, the uproar dying down, as usually happens, or even being broken through; he did not slip away through a mist, which would not have been subject to any touch at all, if it had been one. For “nothing can touch or be touched except a body” is a sentence worthy even of worldly wisdom. In sum, he himself soon touched others, and by laying hands on them, hands that could certainly be felt, he conferred the benefits of healing, as real and as far from imaginary as the hands by which he conferred them. He is therefore Isaiah's Christ, the healer of diseases: “He,” it says, “takes away our weaknesses and carries our sicknesses.” And the Greeks commonly use “carry” for “take away.” The general promise is enough for me for now: whatever Jesus healed, he is mine. We shall come, however, to the particular kinds of healing. Freeing people from demons is also a healing of disease. And so the evil spirits went out, as though on the pattern of the former example, with a testimony, crying out, “You are the Son of God.” Of which God, let it be made clear here too. But they were likewise rebuked and ordered to be silent. For Christ likewise wished to be recognized as the Son of God by men, not by unclean spirits; that Christ, at least, to whom this was fitting, because he had sent ahead those through whom he could be recognized, and certainly worthier heralds. It belonged to him to reject the proclamation of an unclean spirit who had holy ones in abundance. But one who had never been announced, if he wished to be recognized (and he had come in vain if he did not), would not have scorned the testimony of a substance foreign to him, whatever it was, since he who had come down into another's domain had none of his own. And now, as the destroyer of the Creator, he would have wanted nothing more than to be recognized by the Creator's spirits and published abroad through their fear; except that Marcion denies that his god is feared, maintaining that the good one is not feared, but the judge, with whom lie the grounds of fear: anger, severity, judgments, vengeance, condemnation. But the demons certainly gave way through fear; therefore they were confessing the Son of a God to be feared, and would have had reason not to give way if he were not to be feared. And he, expelling them by command and rebuke, not by persuasion as a good one would, showed himself one to be feared. Or did he rebuke them because he was feared, not wishing to be feared? And how did he want them to go out, which they would not do except from fear? He fell, then, into a necessity by which he acted unlike his own nature, when as good he could have spared them once for all. He fell too into another mark of betrayal, in that he allowed himself to be feared by the demons as the Creator's Son, so that he expelled the demons not by his own power but by the Creator's authority. He goes out into a desert place. This too is a customary region of the Creator. It was fitting that the Word should be seen there too in a body, where he had once acted in a cloud as well. The setting of the place which had pleased the law suited the gospel too. So let the wilderness be glad: this Isaiah had promised. Detained by the crowds, he says, “I must announce the kingdom of God to other cities too.” Had he already shown his god anywhere? Not yet at all, I think. Was he speaking to people who knew of another god as well? I do not believe that either. So if neither had he made known another god, nor did they know any but the Creator, he was proclaiming the kingdom of the same God whom alone he knew to be known to those who heard him.

Out of so many kinds of work, why did he look to fishing in particular, to take from it Simon and the sons of Zebedee as apostles (for it cannot be seen as a simple deed from which an argument was to proceed), saying to Peter, who was frightened by the huge catch of fish, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men”? For by this saying he suggested to them the understanding of a fulfilled prophecy: that he was the one who had declared through Jeremiah, “Behold, I will send many fishermen, and they will fish them,” namely men. Finally, leaving their boats, they followed him, understanding him to be the one who had begun to do what he had foretold. It is another matter if he chose to pick from the guild of boatmen because he was one day to have the shipmaster Marcion as an apostle. We laid down against the Antitheses that what he considers the difference between the law and the gospel does nothing for Marcion's purpose, since that difference too was arranged by the Creator, indeed foretold in the promise of a new law, a new word, and a new covenant. But since, in the case of the cleansing of the leper, he argues more pointedly before some “fellow-sufferer” and “fellow-object of hatred” of his, whoever he is, I have not been reluctant to meet him, and first of all to show the force of the figurative law, which, in the example of the leper who was not to be touched but rather removed from all dealings, forbade fellowship with a man stained with sins; with such people the apostle too forbids even taking food, for the stigma of sins is shared as if by contagion if anyone mixes with a sinner. And so the Lord, wishing the law to be understood more deeply, as signifying spiritual things through carnal ones, and on this account not destroying but rather building up the law which he wished to be recognized as more closely his own, touched the leper. Even if a man could have been defiled by him, God certainly would not be defiled, being incapable of pollution. So it will not be laid down against him that he ought to have kept the law and not touched the unclean, since the touch of the unclean would not defile him. I show that this fits my Christ better, by demonstrating that it does not fit yours. For if he touched the leper as a rival of the law, making nothing of the law's precept through contempt of defilement, how could he be defiled who had no body to be defiled? For a phantom could not be defiled. So one who could not be defiled, being a phantom, will be incapable of pollution not by divine power but by the emptiness of a phantom; nor can he be seen to have despised a defilement for which he had no material. So neither did he destroy the law, since he escaped defilement by the accident of being a phantom, not by a display of power. And if Elisha, the Creator's prophet, cleansed only one leper, Naaman the Syrian, out of so many Israelite lepers, this does not make for a difference in Christ either, as if he were in this way better because, a stranger, he cleanses an Israelite leper whom his own Lord had not been able to cleanse. The easier cleansing of the Syrian signifies the cleansing, through Christ their light, of the nations, which bristled with the seven stains of the capital sins: idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, false witness, fraud. That is why he washed seven times in the Jordan, as though once for each heading; at the same time to proclaim the expiation of the whole week, and because the force and fullness of a single washing was reserved for Christ alone, who was to make on earth a shortened washing, as he made a shortened word. For Marcion objects this too: that Elisha needed material, applied water, and that seven times, while Christ, using a word only, and that once, brought about the cure at once. As if I would not dare to claim the word itself too for the substance of the Creator: of everything he is the more powerful author who is the earlier. It is plainly incredible that the power of the Creator should have worked the cure of one disease by a word, when by a word it brought forth once for all the whole mass of the world! By what is the Creator's Christ better distinguished than by the power of the word? “But he is another Christ, because he acted otherwise than Elisha, because the master is more powerful than his servant.” What are you laying down, Marcion? That things are done by servants in the same way as by their masters themselves? Are you not afraid that it will turn to your disgrace, if you deny that Christ is the Creator's because he was more powerful than the Creator's servant, because he is recognized as greater than Elisha's smallness, if indeed he is greater? For the cure is equal, though the method differs. What more did your Christ accomplish than my Elisha? Indeed, what great thing did your Christ's word accomplish, when it accomplished what the Creator's river did? The rest agrees with this. As regards avoiding human glory, he forbade him to publish it; as regards safeguarding the law, he ordered the procedure to be carried out: “Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift which Moses commanded.” For he was still safeguarding in their images the figurative proofs of the law, as being prophetic, which signified that a man once a sinner, cleansed soon after by the word of God, ought to offer a gift to God at the temple, namely prayer and thanksgiving in the church through Christ Jesus, the universal priest of the Father. So he added, “that it may be for a testimony to you,” no doubt one by which he testified that he was not dissolving the law but fulfilling it, by which he testified that he himself was the one who was announced as going to take up their diseases and illnesses. This interpretation of the testimony, so fitting and so due, Marcion, the flatterer of his own Christ, seeks to exclude under the pretext of gentleness and mildness. “For as good,” he says, “and moreover as knowing that everyone who was freed from leprosy would carry out the rites of the law, he therefore gave this command.” Then he came down in vain, as though to destroy the law, if he gives way to those who comply with the law. On the contrary, as one who knew their habit, he ought rather to have forestalled it to turn them away from it, if that was what he had come for. What then? Did he persevere in his goodness, that is, in permitting the law, or not? If he persevered as good, he will nowhere be a destroyer of the law, nor will he be held to belong to another god, since the destruction of the law ceases by which he is claimed for another god. If he did not persevere as good, destroying the law afterwards, then he gave them false testimony in the cure of the leper, for he abandoned goodness while destroying the law. He is bad, then, when he overturns the law, if he is good when he indulges it. But also, by indulging compliance with the law, he confirmed that the law was good, for no one allows compliance with what is evil. So he is bad on this count, if he indulged compliance with a bad law, and worse on that, if he came as destroyer of a good law. Likewise, if he commanded the gift to be offered because he knew that everyone freed from leprosy would do so, he could also have not commanded what he knew would happen of itself. Why did he not keep silent, so that the man might obey the law by his own choice alone? Then he could to some extent have seemed to show his forbearance. But he adds his authority too, enlarged by the weight of a testimony. A testimony to what, if not to the law asserted? Certainly it makes no difference how he confirmed the law, whether as good or as superfluous, whether as forbearing or as inconsistent, so long as I drive you from your position, Marcion. See, he commanded the law to be fulfilled. In whatever way he commanded it, in the same way he could also have pronounced beforehand that saying, “I have not come to dissolve the law but to fulfill it.” What business had you, then, to erase from the gospel what is sound? For you have confessed that out of goodness he did what you deny he said. It is established, then, that he said it, since he also did it, and that you rather have rooted the Lord's saying out of the gospel than that our people put it in.

The paralytic too is healed, and that in a gathering, with the people looking on. “For the people,” says Isaiah, “will see the majesty of the Lord and the glory of God.” What majesty and what glory? “Be strong, you slack hands and loosened knees” (this will be paralysis); “be strong, do not fear.” Not idly repeating “be strong,” nor pointlessly adding “do not fear,” since with the restoration of the limbs he was promising the return of strength as well (“Rise and take up your bed”), and at the same time vigor of mind not to fear those who were going to say, “Who will forgive sins but God alone?” So you have here the fulfilled prophecy both of the particular healing and of what followed the healing. Recognize Christ as the forgiver of sins too in the same prophet: “For,” he says, “he will forgive the sins of many, and he himself will take away our sins.” For at the very beginning too, in the person of the Lord himself: “Even if your sins are like rose-red, I will make them white as snow; even if like scarlet, I will make them white as wool”; showing in the rose-red the blood of the prophets, and in the scarlet, as brighter, the blood of the Lord. Micah too, of the pardon of sins: “Who is a God like you, taking away iniquities and passing over the injustices of the remnant of your inheritance? And he has not kept his anger as a testimony, because he delights in mercy. He will turn and have mercy on us; he will sink our sins, and he will sink our sins into the depth of the sea.” But even if nothing of the kind had been foretold of Christ, I would have examples of this kindness in the Creator, which promise me the Father's affection in the Son too. I see the Ninevites obtaining pardon for their crimes from the Creator, not to say from Christ even then, who from the beginning acted in the Father's name. I read too that the prophet Nathan said to David, when he acknowledged his sin against Uriah, “And the Lord has put away your sin, and you shall not die”; likewise that King Ahab, husband of Jezebel, guilty of idolatry and of the blood of Naboth, obtained pardon on the ground of repentance; and that Jonathan, the son of Saul, wiped out by entreaty the guilt of breaking a fast. Why should I recount the people itself, so often restored by the forgiveness of sins, by that God, of course, who prefers mercy to sacrifice and the repentance of the sinner to his death? First, then, you must deny that the Creator ever forgave sins; next, you must show that he foretold nothing of the kind of his Christ; and so you will prove that this kindness of Christ, a new Christ, of course, is new, if you prove that it is neither equal to the Creator's nor foretold by the Creator. But whether forgiving sins can belong to one who is denied to retain them, whether it is his to acquit whose it is not also to condemn, and whether it is fitting for him to pardon against whom nothing has been committed, we have already engaged elsewhere, and prefer to recall rather than rehandle. About the Son of Man our prescription is twofold: that Christ could not lie so as to declare himself Son of Man if he was not truly so; and that no one is constituted son of man who is not born of a human being, whether father or mother. And so we must discuss of which human being he should be taken as son, father's or mother's. If he is from God the Father, then certainly not from a human father; if he is not from a human father, it remains that he is from a human mother; if from a human mother, it is now clear that he is from a virgin. For one to whom no human father is given will not have a husband assigned to his mother either; and one to whom no husband is assigned is a virgin. Otherwise two fathers will be held, God and a man, if the mother is not a virgin. For she will have a husband, so as not to be a virgin, and by having a husband she will make two fathers, God and man, for one who would be the son both of God and of a man. Such a birth, perhaps, the fables give to Castor or Hercules. If these points are distinguished thus, that is, if he is son of man from his mother, because not from a father, and from a virgin mother, because not from a human father, this will be Isaiah's Christ, whom he foretells a virgin will conceive. On what ground, then, you admit him as Son of Man, Marcion, I cannot see. If as son of a human father, you deny he is the Son of God; if also of God, you make Christ the Hercules of fable; if only of a human mother, you grant me mine; if neither of a human mother nor of a human father, then he is son of no human being, and he must have told a lie who said he was what he was not. One thing can relieve your straits: if you dare either to give your god, the father of Christ, the name of Man as well, as Valentinus did with his Aeon, or to deny that the virgin was human, which not even Valentinus did. What now if Christ is registered under the very title Son of Man in Daniel? Will that not suffice to prove him the prophetic Christ? For when he calls himself what was foretold of the Creator's Christ, he doubtless offers himself to be understood as the one of whom it was foretold. A sharing of names may perhaps be seen as simple chance (and yet we maintain that he ought not to have been called either Christ or Jesus, holding to the condition of difference); but a designation, such as “Son of Man,” in so far as it arises from a circumstance, is the harder to coincide, over and above a sharing of names, since it arises from a particular circumstance, especially when the cause by which it would come to be shared does not agree. And so, since a designation belongs properly to the one in whom it has its cause, if it is also claimed for another who shares the name, then the sharing of the name too becomes suspect in the one for whom a shared designation is claimed without cause; and it follows that the one is to be believed who is found more fitted for both name and designation, while the other is excluded who has no share in the designation, lacking its cause. And none will be more fitted for both than the one who first received both the name of Christ and the designation Son of Man, namely the Creator's Jesus. He it is who was seen by the king of Babylon in the furnace as the fourth with his martyrs, “like a son of man”; the same who was revealed to Daniel himself directly as a Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven as judge, as Scripture also shows. I have said that this could have been enough about the prophetic naming of the Son of Man. But Scripture gives me more, namely the Lord's own interpretation. For when the Jews, looking only at his humanity and not yet sure of his divinity, as being also Son of God, rightly objected that a man could not forgive sins, but God alone, why did he not answer them, according to their meaning, about a man, that he had authority to forgive sins, when by naming the Son of Man he would be naming a man? Why, unless he wished to strike them back with the very designation “Son of Man” from the book of Daniel, to show that a man too was the one who forgave sins: namely that one alone, the Son of Man in Daniel's prophecy, who received the authority to judge, and through it, of course, to forgive sins as well (for he who judges also acquits), so that, this stumbling-block being removed by the recollection of Scripture, they might more easily recognize him as the Son of Man himself from the very forgiveness of sins. Indeed, he nowhere professed himself Son of Man before this passage, the first in which he forgave sins, that is, the first in which he judged, by acquitting. Consider what sort of thing the opposing side argues against this, whatever it is. For it must tend to this madness: to maintain that he is Son of Man, so as not to make him a liar, and to deny that he was born of a human being, so as not to concede that he is the son of a virgin. But if divine authority, the nature of things, and common sense do not admit the heretical insanity, here too is an opportunity to interject, as briefly as possible, about the substance of his body against Marcion's phantoms. If he was born of a human being, as Son of Man, he is body from body. You would plainly more easily find a man born without a heart or a brain, like Marcion himself, than without a body, like Marcion's Christ. And so examine the heart, or the brain, of the man from Pontus.

He brings forward as an argument the tax collector chosen by the Lord, as though chosen by an adversary of the law, a stranger to the law and a profane outsider to Judaism. He forgot Peter, a man of the law, who was not only chosen but also received testimony for the recognition given him by the Father; he had nowhere read that Christ was foretold as the light and hope and expectation of the nations. On the contrary, Christ rather approved the Jews in saying that the physician is not needed by the healthy but by the sick. For if he wished the heathen and tax collectors whom he was choosing to be understood as the sick, he was confirming that the Jews were healthy, to whom he said a physician was not needed. If this is so, he did wrong to come down to destroy the law, as if to cure a bad illness, since those who lived under it were in good health and had no need of a physician. And what sort of thing is it that he put forward the comparison of a physician and did not carry it out? For as no one brings a physician to the healthy, so no one brings one to those who are so much strangers as man is to Marcion's god, man having his own author and protector, and from him rather Christ as physician. The comparison settles this in advance: that a physician is rather provided by the one to whom the sick belong. But where did John come from, too, into the midst? A sudden Christ, a sudden John! So are all things with Marcion which have their own full order with the Creator. But the rest about John elsewhere; for each point must be answered as it comes up. Now I shall maintain this: to show that John agrees with Christ and Christ with John, as the Creator's prophet agrees with the Creator's Christ, and so let the heretic blush, having frustrated John's course in vain. For if John had done nothing at all as, according to Isaiah, the one crying out in the wilderness and preparer of the Lord's ways by proclaiming and commending repentance; if he had not also dipped Christ himself among the rest, no one would have challenged Christ's disciples, who ate and drank, by the standard of John's disciples, who were constantly fasting and praying; because, if there had been any difference between Christ and John and the flock of each, there would be no demand for comparison, and the aim of the challenge would be empty. For no one would wonder, and no one would be troubled, if the rival preachings of different divinities did not agree with each other about disciplines either, when they did not first agree about the authorities behind those disciplines. So Christ was John's, and John Christ's, both belonging to the Creator, and both preachers and teachers from the law and the prophets. If Christ had rejected John's discipline as belonging to another god, and had defended his disciples as rightly walking otherwise, as initiated, that is, into another and contrary divinity, well and good; but as it is, humbly giving the reason that the sons of the bridegroom could not fast while the bridegroom was with them, and promising that they would fast afterwards, when the bridegroom had been taken away from them, he neither defended his disciples, but rather excused them, as not having been rebuked without reason, nor rejected John's discipline, but rather conceded it, appointing it to his own time; whereas he would otherwise have rejected it and defended its rivals, if what was already in existence had not been his own. I hold my Christ in the name of bridegroom too, of whom the psalm says: “He is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber; his going forth is from the height of heaven, and his return to its very height”; who also rejoices to the Father through Isaiah: “Let my soul exult in the Lord, for he has clothed me with the garment of salvation and the tunic of joy; like a bridegroom he has put a miter on me, like a bride …” For he reckons the church too as in himself, of whom the same Spirit says to him: “And you will put them all around you like a bride's ornament.” This bride Christ also summons to himself through Solomon from the calling of the nations, since you have read: “Come, bride, from Lebanon”; with an elegant mention of Mount Lebanon, of course, whose name among the Greeks means frankincense, for he was betrothing the church to himself out of idolatry. Deny now, Marcion, that you are utterly mad. See, you are attacking the law of your own god too. He does not join marriages, does not admit those already joined, dips no one but a celibate or a eunuch, and reserves baptism for death or divorce. Why then do you make his Christ a bridegroom? This is the name of the one who joined male and female, not of one who separated them. You have also erred in that saying of the Lord in which he seems to distinguish new things and old. You are puffed up with old wineskins and have lost your brain to new wine, and so have sewn onto the old, that is the earlier, gospel the patch of heretical novelty. In what, I should like to learn, does the Creator differ? When he commands through Jeremiah, “Break up new fallow ground for yourselves,” does he not turn them away from the old? When he declares through Isaiah, “The old things have passed away; behold the new things which I make,” does he not turn them to the new? We have long since established that this appointment of former things, promised rather by the Creator, is displayed by Christ, under the authority of one and the same God, to whom both the old and the new belong. For no one commits new wine to old wineskins who has no old wineskins, and no one puts a new patch on an old garment unless he also has an old garment. He does not do something, if it is not to be done, who has the means to do it, if it were to be done. So if he was aiming the comparison at this, to show that he was separating the newness of the gospel from the oldness of the law, he was showing that the one from which he was separating it was also his own. The separation of things belonging to others would not have been worth noting, since no one joins his own things to another's in order to be able to separate them from another's. Separation presupposes the joining from which it is made. So the things he was separating he was also showing to have been in one, as they would have remained if he had not separated them. And yet, if we grant this separation, it is by reformation, by enlargement, by progress; as the fruit is separated from the seed, though the fruit comes from the seed, so the gospel is separated from the law while it advances out of the law: other than it, but not foreign to it; different, but not contrary. Nor is Christ's manner of speech new. When he puts forward comparisons, when he refutes questions, it comes from the seventy-seventh psalm: “I will open my mouth,” he says, “in a parable,” that is, a comparison; “I will utter problems,” that is, I will set out questions. If he had wished to show himself a man of another nation, he would certainly have shown it by the peculiarity of his speech.

About the sabbath too I state this first: that this question could not have arisen if Christ had not been proclaiming the God of the sabbath. For there would have been no dispute about why he was destroying the sabbath, if it was his duty to destroy it. And it would have been his duty to destroy it if he belonged to another god, and no one would have wondered at his doing what suited him. They wondered, therefore, because it did not suit him to proclaim God the Creator and attack his sabbath. And, to settle each first point so as not to renew the same things everywhere against every argument of the adversary that leans on some new institution of Christ, this definition will now stand: that the newness of each institution was disputed because nothing had yet been published about the newness of a divinity, just as there was no dispute about … ; and that it cannot be turned round from the very newness of any institution into a sufficient demonstration by Christ of another divinity, since it has been established that the newness itself, having been announced by the Creator, is not to be wondered at in Christ; and since another god ought certainly to have been set forth first, and his discipline introduced afterwards, because God gives authority to discipline, not discipline to God; unless Marcion, plainly so perverse, learned his letters not through a master but his master through letters. For the rest, I direct the matter of the sabbath thus. If Christ overthrew the sabbath, he did so after the Creator's example, since at the siege of the city of Jericho, when the ark of the covenant was carried round the walls for seven days, on the sabbath too, the Creator by his command destroyed the sabbath through work, as those think who hold this of Christ too, not knowing that neither Christ nor the Creator destroyed the sabbath, as we shall show shortly. And yet even then the sabbath was shaken through a Jesus, so that this too might be reported of Christ. Even if he pursued with hatred the most solemn day of the Jews, as a Christ not of the Jews, in professing hatred of the sabbath he also professed the Creator, as his Christ, following him who cried out by the mouth of Isaiah, “Your new moons and your sabbaths my soul hates.” But we also know in what sense these words too were said. Still, in this kind of case even an abrupt defense must be used against an abrupt challenge. Now I will argue about the very matter in which Christ's discipline seemed to destroy the sabbath. The disciples had been hungry that day; they had plucked ears of grain and rubbed them in their hands; by preparing food they had broken the holy rest. Christ excuses them and is charged with violating the sabbath; the Pharisees accuse. Marcion seizes on the issue of the controversy as though (to play a little with the truth of my Lord) it were a case of letter against intent: for the Creator's side is taken from the letter, and Christ's pretext from the intent, as though … from the example of David, who went into the temple on the sabbath and prepared food, boldly breaking the loaves of the presence. For he too remembered that this privilege had been granted to the sabbath from the beginning, when the day itself was first known: I mean exemption from fasting. For when the Creator forbade manna to be gathered for two days, he allowed it only on the day of preparation, so that the provision of food on the day before might free the rest of the following sabbath from fasting. It is well, then, that the Lord followed the same reason in destroying the sabbath, if they will have it so called; well, that he expressed the Creator's disposition too in honoring the sabbath by not fasting. In short, he would really have destroyed the sabbath, and the Creator himself, only if he had ordered his disciples to fast on the sabbath, against the letter and the intent of the Creator. But since he does not firmly defend his disciples but excuses them; since he sets human need against the charge as a plea; since he keeps the higher honor of the sabbath, that of not being made sad, rather than that of resting; since he puts David and his companions on a level with his own disciples in both fault and pardon; since he is pleased because the Creator allowed it; since by his example he too is so good: is he for that reason foreign to the Creator? Next the Pharisees watch whether he will heal on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him: certainly as a destroyer of the sabbath, not as the proclaimer of a new god. For perhaps I shall press this one point everywhere: that another Christ was nowhere proclaimed. But the Pharisees were wholly mistaken about the law of the sabbath, not noticing that God imposes rest from work conditionally, under a certain kind of work. For when he says of the sabbath day, “You shall not do any of your work on it,” by saying “your” he defined it as human work, which each one performs from his craft or business, not divine work. But the work of salvation and safety is not man's but properly God's; as again in the law: “You shall not do any work on it,” he says, “except what shall be done for every soul,” that is, in the cause of saving a soul, because God's work can be done through a man too for the salvation of a soul, yet by God. This Christ too was going to do as man, inasmuch as he was also God. Wishing, then, to lead them into this sense of the law through the restoration of the withered hand, he asks: “Is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or not? to save a life or to destroy it?” so that, by permitting the work he was about to do for a soul, he might remind them which works the law of the sabbath forbade, namely human ones, and which it enjoined, namely divine ones, which would be done for every soul; being called Lord of the sabbath because he protected the sabbath as his own possession. Even if he had destroyed it, he would have done so rightly as its Lord, still more he who instituted it. But he did not destroy it at all as its Lord, so that from this it can now be seen that not even at the carrying round of the ark at Jericho was the sabbath destroyed by the Creator. For that too was God's work, which he himself had commanded and which he had arranged for the sake of the souls of his people, placed in the danger of war. And if somewhere he professed hatred of sabbaths, by saying “your sabbaths,” counting them as men's, not his own, which the people celebrated without the fear of God, full of sins, loving God with their lips and not their heart, he gave a different standing to his own sabbaths, that is, those kept according to his discipline; these he afterwards declares through the same prophet to be true, delightful, and not to be profaned. So Christ did not rescind the sabbath at all, whose law he kept, both above, in the case of the disciples, working for a soul (for he allowed the hungry the comfort of food), and now in healing the withered hand, pressing home everywhere by his deeds, “I have not come to dissolve the law but to fulfill it,” even though Marcion has stopped his mouth over this saying. For here too he fulfilled the law, while interpreting its condition, while throwing light on the difference of works, while doing what the law excepts from the rest of the sabbath, while by his good deed making more holy the sabbath day itself, holy from the beginning by the Father's blessing, a day on which, that is, he provided divine help; which an adversary would have provided on other days, so as not to adorn the Creator's sabbath and not to render to the sabbath the works due to it. If on that day the prophet Elisha too restored to life the dead son of the Shunammite woman, you see, Pharisee, and you, Marcion, that it was long ago the Creator's to do good on sabbaths, to save life and not destroy it, and that Christ brought in nothing new that is not from the pattern, the gentleness, the mercy, and the foretelling too of the Creator. For here also he makes present the prophecy of a particular healing: “Slack hands grow strong,” as also slack knees did in the paralytic.

Certainly he brings good news of peace and all good things to Zion and Jerusalem; certainly he goes up the mountain and spends the night there in prayer, and is surely heard by the Father. Unroll the prophets, then, and recognize the whole sequence. “Go up on a high mountain,” says Isaiah, “you who bring good news to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem.” (With strength still: they were amazed at his teaching, for he was teaching as one having power.) And again: “Therefore my people will know my name on that day” (what name, if not Christ's?) “that I am he who speaks”; for he it was then who spoke in the prophets, the Word, the Son of the Creator. “I am here while there is time, upon the mountains, as one bringing the good news of peace, as one bringing good news of good things.” Likewise Nahum, of the Twelve: “For behold the swift feet on the mountain of one bringing good news of peace.” Of the voice of prayer to the Father by night, the psalm plainly says: “My God, I will cry by day, and you will not hear; and by night, and it will not be in vain for me.” And elsewhere the psalm, of the same place and voice: “With my voice I cried to the Lord, and he heard me from his holy mountain.” You have the representation of the name; you have the act of one bringing good news; you have the place, the mountain, and the time, night, and the sound of the voice, and the Father's hearing: you have the Christ of the prophets. But why did he choose twelve apostles, and not some other number? So that I could interpret my Christ from this too, as foretold not only by the words of the prophets but also by the evidence of events. For I find figures of this number with the Creator: the twelve springs of Elim; the twelve gems on the priestly robe of Aaron; and the twelve stones chosen by Joshua from the Jordan and laid up in the ark of the covenant. For just so many apostles were portended: like springs and rivers, to water the world of the nations, formerly dry and deserted of the knowledge of God (as also through Isaiah: “I will put rivers in a waterless land”); like gems, to give light to the sacred robe of the church, which Christ, the Father's high priest, put on; and like stones, solid in faith, which the true Jesus chose out of the washing of the Jordan and received into the sanctuary of his covenant. What of this kind, by way of defending the number, fits Marcion's Christ? Nothing can be seen as done simply by him which can be seen as not done simply by mine. The thing will belong to him with whom the preparation for the thing is found. He changes Peter's name too from Simon, because the Creator also re-formed the names of Abraham, Sarah, and Hoshea, calling the last Joshua and adding syllables to the others. But why Peter in particular? If for the strength of his faith, many materials, equally solid, could have lent a name from their own. Or is it because Christ is both rock and stone? For we read that he was set as a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. I pass over the rest. So he chose to share a name especially with the dearest of his disciples from among his own figures, more appropriately, I think, than from figures not his own. A multitude comes together from Tyre and other regions, even from overseas. The psalm was looking to this: “And behold, the foreigners and Tyre and the people of the Ethiopians, these were there. Mother Zion, a man will say, and a man was born in her” (for God was born man) “and he has built her” (by the Father's will); so that you may know that the Gentiles then came together to him who, being God, had been born man, to build the church by the Father's will from foreigners too. So also Isaiah: “Behold, these come from far off, and these from the north and the sea, and others from the land of the Persians”; of whom again: “Lift up your eyes round about and see: they are all gathered together”; and of whom further on, seeing people unknown and strangers: “And you will say in your heart, Who has borne me these? … Who has brought these up for me? And where were these for me?” Will this be the Christ not of the prophets? And who will be the Christ of the Marcionites? If perversity pleases, one who did not belong to the prophets.

I come now to his regular sayings, through which he introduces the distinctive character of his teaching; to Christ's edict, so to speak: “Blessed are the beggars” (for so the interpretation of the Greek word demands), “for theirs is the kingdom of God.” Already the very fact that he began with blessings belongs to the Creator, who consecrated all things, as he brought them forth, with no other word than a blessing: “My heart,” he says, “has uttered a most excellent word.” This will be the most excellent word, the word of blessing, which is recognized as inaugurating the new testament too, after the example of the old. What wonder, then, if he entered upon his work through a saying of this kind from the dispositions of the Creator, who always loves, comforts, protects, and vindicates beggars, the poor, the lowly, widows, and orphans, so that you may believe this seemingly private kindness of Christ to be a stream from the springs of the Savior? Truly I do not know where to turn among so great a multitude of such sayings, as in a forest, or a meadow, or an orchard. They must be gathered here and there as they come. The psalm cries out: “Do justice to the orphan and the beggar, and treat the lowly and poor justly; set free the poor, and rescue the beggar from the hand of the sinner.” Likewise the seventy-first psalm: “He will judge the beggars of the people in righteousness, and will save the sons of the poor”; and in what follows, of Christ: “All nations will serve him” (but David ruled over the one Jewish nation, so let no one think it spoken of David, because he too took in the lowly and those in distress), “because he has set free,” it says, “the beggar from the mighty; he will spare the beggar and the poor, and will save the souls of the poor; from usury and injustice he will redeem their souls, and their name will be honored in his sight.” Likewise: “Let the sinners be turned into the underworld, all the nations that forget God; for the beggar will not be forgotten for ever; the endurance of the poor will not perish for ever.” Likewise: “Who is like our God, who dwells on high and looks upon lowly things in heaven and on earth; who raises the beggar from the earth and lifts the poor from the dunghill, to make him sit with the princes of the people,” in his kingdom, of course? So too earlier, in the books of Kingdoms, Hannah, the mother of Samuel, giving glory to God in the Spirit: “Who raises the poor from the earth,” she says, “and lifts the beggar from the dunghill, to make him sit with the mighty of the people and on thrones of glory,” royal thrones, of course. And through Isaiah, how he inveighs against the oppressors of the needy! “But you, why have you burned my vineyard, and the plunder of the beggar is in your houses? Why do you injure my people and put the face of the beggars to shame?” And again: “Woe to those who write wickedness! For writing they write what is evil, avoiding the judgments of the beggars and plundering the rights of the poor of my people.” These judgments he demands for orphans and widows too, as for the needy, for their comfort: “Do justice to the orphan and treat the widow justly, and come, let us be reconciled, says the Lord.” He who has so great an affection for every condition of lowliness, his too will be the kingdom which Christ promises, since those to whom it is promised have long belonged to his affection. For even if you think that the Creator's promises were earthly and Christ's heavenly: it is well that no heaven of any other god has yet appeared, except his to whom the earth also belongs; it is well that the Creator promised lesser things first, so that I may more easily believe him about greater things too than one who never first built up belief in his generosity with lesser things. “Blessed are the hungry, for they will be filled.” I could have transferred this heading to the one above, since the hungry are none other than the poor and the beggars, if the Creator had not appointed this promise too particularly, as a groundwork for his gospel, of course; since through Isaiah he says of those whom he was to call from the end of the earth, the nations, of course: “Behold, they will come swiftly, lightly” (swiftly, as hastening at the end of the times; lightly, as without the burdens of the former law); “they will not hunger or thirst.” Therefore they will be filled, which is certainly not promised except to the hungry and thirsty. And again: “Behold,” he says, “those who serve me will be filled, but you will hunger; behold, those who serve me will drink, but you will thirst.” We shall see whether these opposites too are furnished beforehand for Christ. Meanwhile, the promise of fullness to the hungry belongs to the Creator. “Blessed are those who weep, for they will laugh.” Run through the saying of Isaiah: “Behold, those who serve me will be delighted, but you will be put to shame; behold, those who serve me will exult in joy, but you will cry out for sorrow of heart.” These opposites too we shall recognize in Christ. Certainly delight and exultation in joy are promised to those in the opposite condition, the sad, the sorrowful, and the anxious. So too the hundred and twenty-fifth psalm says: “Those who sow in tears will reap in exultation.” Further, laughter comes to those who exult and receive joy, just as weeping to those who grieve and suffer. So the Creator, foretelling the occasions of laughter and weeping, was first to say that those who weep would laugh. So he who began with the comfort of the poor, the lowly, the hungry, and the weeping was eager at once to present himself as the one whom he had shown through Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor” (“Blessed are the beggars, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”); “he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted” (“Blessed are those who hunger, for they will be filled”); “to call the sick” (“Blessed are those who weep, for they will laugh”); “to give to those who mourn in Zion glory, and instead of ashes the oil of joy, and a garment of glory instead of a spirit of weariness.” If Christ, as soon as he was received, carried out these things, either he is the one who foretold that he would come for these things, or, if the one who foretold has not yet come (I would say it absurdly, but necessarily), perhaps he commissioned Marcion's Christ! “Blessed will you be when men hate you and reproach you and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man.” By this declaration he doubtless exhorts to endurance. What less does the Creator say through Isaiah? “Do not fear reproach from men, and do not be diminished by their scorn.” What reproach, what scorn? That which was to come on account of the Son of Man. Which Son of Man? The one who is according to the Creator. How shall we prove it? From the hatred foretold against him too, as through Isaiah to the Jews, the authors of the hatred: “Because of you my name is blasphemed among the nations”; and elsewhere: “Hallow him who limits his own life, who is held in contempt by the nations, by servants and magistrates.” For if hatred was foretold against that Son of Man who is according to the Creator, and the gospel testifies that the name of Christians, certainly derived from Christ, will be hated on account of the Son of Man, that is, Christ, then it makes the cause of the hatred that Son of Man who was according to the Creator, against whom the hatred was foretold. And certainly, if he had not yet come, the hatred of the name, which is at work today, could not have come before the person who bears the name. For he is both hallowed among us, and he limits his own life, laying it down for us, and he is held in contempt by the nations. So the one who was born will be the Son of Man, on account of whom our name too is rejected.

“In the same way,” he says, “their fathers did to the prophets.” O turncoat Christ, now destroyer, now champion of the prophets! He destroyed them as a rival, turning their disciples to himself; he championed them as a friend, rebuking their persecutors. Now, in so far as championing the prophets would not have suited Marcion's Christ, who had come to destroy them, to that extent rebuking the persecutors of the prophets suits the Creator's Christ, who was fulfilling them in everything; or because it belongs rather to the Creator to reproach sons with the sins of their fathers than to that god who does not even punish each person's own sins. “But,” you say, “he was not therefore protecting the prophets, if he wished to affirm the iniquity of the Jews, in that they had not acted dutifully even toward their own prophets.” On the contrary, there was no iniquity to reproach the Jews with here; they should rather have been praised and approved, if they had ill-treated those for whose destruction the supremely good god was moved after so long an age. But now, I suppose, he is no longer supremely good; he has now spent some time with the Creator, and is not wholly the god of Epicurus. For see, he turns to cursing, and shows himself to be one who knows how to be offended and to be angry. For he says “woe.” But we are faced with a question about the character of this word, as though it were not so much a curse as a warning. And what difference does it make to the case, since a warning too is not without the sting of a threat, especially when made more bitter by “woe”? And both warning and threat will belong to one who knows how to be angry. For no one will warn and no one will threaten, so that someone may not do something, except one who will punish it when done; and no one would punish except one who knows how to be angry. Others do acknowledge it as a word of cursing, but will have it that Christ pronounced “woe” not as properly his own sentence, but because “woe” comes from the Creator, and he wished to set the Creator's harshness against them, so as to commend his own forbearance above in the blessings. As if it did not suit the Creator, as showing both, to be both a good God and a judge; so that, having first shown kindness in the blessings, he should also add severity in the curses, furnishing the fullness of both disciplines, both for pursuing the blessing and for guarding against the curse. For so he had also said beforehand: “Behold, I have set before you blessing and curse”; which even foreshadowed this arrangement of the gospel. Otherwise, what sort of being is he who, to insinuate his own goodness, set against it the Creator's harshness? Weak is the commendation propped up by the destruction of another. And in fact, by setting forth the Creator's harshness he confirmed that he is to be feared. If to be feared, then certainly to be obeyed rather than disregarded; and Marcion's Christ now begins to teach in the Creator's favor. Then, if the “woe” aimed at the rich is the Creator's, then it is not Christ who is offended at the rich but the Creator, and Christ ratifies the counts against the rich (I mean pride, vainglory, worldly pursuits, and neglect of God), by which they deserve woe from the Creator. But how would it not belong to the same one to reject the rich who above approved the beggars? No one fails to reject the opposite of what he has approved. So if the curse on the rich is to be assigned to the Creator, the blessing on the beggars will be maintained as his too, and the whole work of Christ now belongs to the Creator. If the blessing on the beggars is to be ascribed to Marcion's god, the curse on the rich will also be laid on him, and he will now be the Creator's equal, as much good as judge; and there will be no room left for the distinction by which there come to be two gods; and with the distinction removed, it will remain to proclaim one God, the Creator. So, if “woe” is a word of cursing or of some severer outcry, and is directed by Christ against the rich, I must prove that the Creator too despises the rich, as I proved that he is the advocate of beggars, so as to show Christ as the Creator's in this saying too. He did enrich Solomon, it is true; but because, given his choice, Solomon preferred to ask for what he knew was pleasing to God, wisdom and understanding, he also earned the riches, which he had not preferred. And yet it is not unfitting for God to grant riches, by which the rich too are helped with comfort (“for,” he says, “you have received your consolation,” from riches, that is, from their glory and worldly fruits), and by which many works of justice and love are carried out. But those vices that attend riches assign the “woe” to the rich in the gospel too, as in Moses' Deuteronomy: “Lest,” he says, “when you have eaten and are full and have built great houses, and your flocks and herds have multiplied, and silver and gold, your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God.” So too he assails King Hezekiah through Isaiah, puffed up with his treasures and boasting of them rather than of God before those who had come from Persia: “Behold, days are coming, and all that is in your house will be taken away, and what your fathers have stored up will be carried to Babylon.” So too through Jeremiah he declares: “Let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories,” that is, “glory in God.” So too through Isaiah he inveighs against the daughters of Zion, puffed up by their abundance of riches; and elsewhere, threatening the noble and proud: “The underworld has enlarged its soul and opened its mouth, and the renowned and great and rich will go down” (this will be Christ's “woe” on the rich); “and man will be humbled,” he who was exalted by riches, of course; “and the man will be dishonored,” he who was honored because of his wealth, of course. Of whom he says again: “Behold, the Lord of powers will throw the glorious into confusion with might, and the lofty will be broken, and the high will fall by the sword.” Who more than the rich? Because they have received their consolation, namely glory and the loftiness of honors, from riches. Turning us from them, he says also in the forty-eighth psalm: “Do not fear when a man becomes rich, and when his glory abounds, for when he dies he will not take everything, nor will his glory go down with him”; likewise in the sixty-first: “Do not desire riches, even if they shine; do not set your heart on them.” Finally, that very word “woe” was long ago aimed through Amos at the rich who overflow with luxuries: “Woe,” he says, “to those who sleep on beds of ivory and are dissolute on their couches, who eat kids from the flocks of goats and suckling calves from the herds of cattle, clapping to the sound of instruments; they reckoned these things as lasting and not as fleeting; who drink strained wine and anoint themselves with the finest ointments.” So even if I showed only that the Creator turns people away from riches, and not also that he condemns the rich beforehand, and that with the very word Christ uses, no one would doubt that the threat against the rich through Christ's “woe” was added by the same one by whom the turning away from those very things, riches, had gone before. For a threat is an addition to a dissuasion. He also pronounces woe on the full, because they will hunger, and on those who laugh now, because they will mourn. To these correspond the things set against the blessings above in the Creator: “Behold, those who serve me will be filled, but you will hunger,” you who are full, of course; and, “Behold, those who serve me will be delighted, but you will be put to shame,” you who laugh now and will weep, of course. For as in the psalm those who sow in tears will reap in gladness, so in the gospel those who sow in laughter, from gladness, will reap in tears. The Creator set these side by side long ago; Christ only renewed them, by separating, not by changing them. “Woe to you, when men speak well of you! In the same way their fathers did to the false prophets.” The Creator equally blames those who seek human blessing and praise, through Isaiah: “My people, those who call you blessed lead you astray and disturb the paths of your feet.” Elsewhere he forbids trust in man at all, as in the praise of man, as through Jeremiah: “Cursed is the man who has his hope in man.” For in the hundred and seventeenth psalm too he says: “It is better to trust in God than to trust in man, and better to hope in God than to hope in princes.” So the Creator renounced everything that is sought from man, let alone blessing. And to reproach the false prophets for being praised or blessed by their fathers belongs to him as much as to reproach the harassing and rejecting of the prophets. As the wrongs done to the prophets would have concerned only their own God, so the favors shown to the false prophets would have displeased only the God of the prophets.

“But I say to you who hear,” he says (showing that this was commanded long ago by the Creator: “Speak in the ears of those who hear”), “love your enemies, and bless those who hate you, and pray for those who slander you.” These things the Creator enclosed in a single declaration through Isaiah: “Say, You are our brothers, to those who hate you.” For if those who are enemies, and hate, and curse, and slander are to be called brothers, then surely he who commanded that they be counted brothers also commanded that those who hate be blessed and that prayer be made for slanderers. Christ plainly teaches a new patience, restraining even the retaliation for injury that the Creator permitted when he demanded an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; he, on the contrary, commands that the other cheek be offered as well, and that the cloak be given up besides the tunic. Plainly, unless Christ added these things as supplements in keeping with the Creator's discipline. And so this must be answered at once: is the discipline of patience preached in the Creator? If through Zechariah he commanded, “Let no one remember his brother's malice,” nor his neighbor's either, for again he says, “Let no one think over his neighbor's malice,” then much more did he enjoin patience under injury who enjoined forgetting it. And when he says, “Vengeance is mine, and I will avenge,” he likewise teaches patience that waits for vengeance. In so far, then, as it is incredible that the same one should seem to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth in retaliation for injury who forbids not only retaliation but even revenge, and even the remembering and thinking over of an injury, to that extent it becomes clear to us how he meant “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”: not to permit a second injury by way of retaliation, which he had forbidden by prohibiting revenge, but to restrain the first by setting retaliation against it, so that each person, considering the license given to a second injury, would restrain himself from the first. For he knew that violence is more easily checked by the immediate prospect of retaliation than by the promise of vengeance. Both, however, had to be established, according to the nature and faith of men, so that one who believed God would wait for vengeance from God, and one who trusted less would fear the retaliations of the law. This intention of the law, which was hard to understand, Christ, the Lord of the sabbath and of the law and of all the Father's arrangements, both revealed and made effective, commanding the offering of the other cheek too, in order all the more to extinguish retaliation for injury, which the law too had wished to prevent through the retaliation clause, and which prophecy had plainly restrained, both forbidding the memory of injury and referring vengeance to God. So if Christ brought in anything, it was by a precept that assists and does not oppose; he did not destroy the Creator's disciplines. Indeed, if we consider the very reason for commanding patience, and one so full and perfect, it will not stand unless it belongs to the Creator, who promises vengeance, who presents himself as judge. Otherwise, if one who is not going to defend me lays on me so great a weight of patience, not only not to strike back but to offer the other cheek as well, not only not to curse back but even to bless, not only not to keep my tunic but to give up my cloak besides, he commands patience in vain, not showing me the reward of the precept, I mean the fruit of patience, which is vengeance; which he ought to have permitted me if he does not provide it himself, or, if he did not permit it to me, to provide himself, since it concerns discipline too that injury be avenged. For every iniquity is curbed by fear of vengeance; otherwise, let loose at will, it will rule, ready to gouge out both eyes and knock out every tooth in the security of impunity. But this is what belongs to the supremely and merely good god: to wrong patience, to throw open the door to violence, not to defend the upright, not to restrain the wicked. “Give to everyone who asks you”: to the needy, of course, or all the more to the needy, if also to one who has plenty. That no one, then, may need a giver, you have the Creator's pattern commanded in Deuteronomy: “There shall be no one in need among you, so that the Lord your God may bless you with blessing,” you as the giver, that is, who have caused there to be no one in need. And there is more here: for he does not command giving to one who asks, but, “Let there be no one in need among you,” that is, take care of your own accord that there be none. All the more does he prejudge that one who asks is to be given to, in what follows too: “But if there is one in need among your brothers, you shall not turn away your heart nor close your hand against your needy brother; you shall surely open your hand to him; you shall lend to him as much as he desires.” For a loan is usually not given except to one who asks. But of lending later. Now, if anyone wishes to argue that the Creator commanded giving to brothers, but Christ to all who ask, so that this is new and different: on the contrary, it will be one of the things through which the Creator's law will be … in Christ. For Christ commanded nothing else toward all than the Creator toward brothers. For even if kindness that works toward strangers is greater, it does not come before that which is owed first to neighbors. For who will be able to love strangers …? But if the second step of kindness is toward strangers, the first toward neighbors, the second step will belong to the one to whom the first belongs, more readily than the second will belong to one to whom the first did not belong. So the Creator, according to the order of nature, taught kindness first toward neighbors, intending afterwards to extend it to strangers too; and according to the plan of his arrangement, first toward the Jews, afterwards to the whole human race as well. And so, as long as the sacrament was within Israel, he rightly commanded mercy toward brothers alone; but when he gave Christ the nations as his inheritance and the ends of the earth as his possession, and what was said through Hosea began to be fulfilled, “Not my people, my people; and she who had not obtained mercy, has obtained mercy,” the nation, namely, from then on Christ extended the law of the Father's kindness to all, excepting no one from compassion, as no one from the calling. So even if he taught something more, this too he received as the inheritance of the nations. “And as you wish men to do to you, so do you also to them.” In this precept its other half is surely understood: “And as you do not wish men to do to you, so do not you do to them.” If a new god, unknown before and not yet clearly made known, commanded this, one who had formed me by no previous instruction by which I might first know what I ought to wish or not wish for myself, and so do to others what I would wish for myself and not do what I would not wish for myself, then he left the meaning of the saying open and did not bind me to agreement between will and deed, to do to others what I wish for myself and not to do to others what I do not wish for myself. For he did not define what I ought to wish or not wish for myself and others, so that I might make my deed match the law of my will. And I can refuse to give another what I would wish another to give me: love, service, comfort, protection, and goods of that kind; and likewise do to another what I would not wish another to do to me: violence, injury, insult, fraud, and evils of that kind. In fact, the heathen, not yet instructed by God, act with this disagreement between will and deed. For even if good and evil are known by nature, they are not known by God's discipline, through the knowledge of which, and only then, the agreement of will and deed is practiced out of faith, as under the fear of God. So Marcion's god, just then revealed, if indeed revealed, could not put out so tight, obscure, and still blind a summary of this precept, one more easily interpreted by my own choice, when he had laid down no distinction for it beforehand. But my Creator long ago and everywhere commanded that the needy, the poor, orphans, and widows be protected, helped, and refreshed, as through Isaiah: “Break your bread for the beggars, and bring those without shelter into your house, and if you see the naked, cover him”; likewise through Ezekiel, of the righteous man: “He will give his bread to the hungry and cover the naked.” So he already then taught me well enough to do to others what I would wish done to me. Likewise, declaring, “You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness,” he taught me not to do to others what I would not wish done to me. And so the precept in the gospel will be his who in the past both laid it down beforehand, distinguished it, and arranged it according to the judgment of his discipline, and now rightly bound it up in a summary; since the Lord, that is Christ, was foretold as one who would make a cut-short word on the earth.

Here now he speaks of lending at interest, when he interjects: “And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what thanks is there to you?” Run through what follows in Ezekiel about the same righteous man: “He has not given his money,” he says, “at interest, and will not take what has overflowed,” that is, the surplus of the loan, which is usury. First, then, it was fitting to root out the fruit of lending, so that he might the more easily accustom man to the loss even of the loan itself, should it be lost, once he had learned to give up its fruit. For this, we say, was the work of the law, preparing the way for the gospel: it was gradually shaping the faith of some people at that time toward the full brilliance of Christian discipline by first precepts of a kindness still stammering. For above too he says: “And he will return the pledge to the debtor” — surely if he is unable to pay, for would any man write that a pledge must be returned to one who pays? — and much more plainly in Deuteronomy: “You shall not sleep upon his pledge; you shall surely return his cloak to him about sunset, and he shall sleep in his cloak”; and more clearly still above: “You shall remit every debt that your neighbor owes you, and you shall not demand it back from your brother, because the release of the Lord your God has been proclaimed.” Now when he commands a debt to be remitted, surely to one who will not pay — for it would be more if it were to one who would pay — when he forbids it to be demanded back, what else does he teach than this: that we should lend to one who will not repay, he who has imposed so great a loss on lending?

“And you will be sons of God.” Nothing could be more shameless, if he will make us sons to himself who has not allowed us to make sons for ourselves, by taking away marriage. How will he enroll his own under a name which he has already erased? I cannot be the son of a eunuch, especially since I have the same Father as all things have. For he is as truly the Father of all who is the Maker of the universe as he is a eunuch who is the maker of no substance. And even if the Creator had not joined male and female, and had not granted offspring to all living creatures as well, I was this to him before paradise, before the offense, before the exile, before the two were made one again: I was a son as soon as he brought me forth by his hands, as soon as he set me moving with his breath. He now calls me son again, giving birth no longer into soul but into spirit. “Because he,” it says, “is kind toward the ungrateful and the wicked.” Well done, Marcion! Quite cleverly you have taken the rains and the suns away from him, so that he would not seem to be the Creator. But who is this kind one, who until now was not even known? How is he kind, from whom no benefits of this kind of kindness had come beforehand, such as suns and rains; who had (not) lent to the human race without hope of return, as the Creator has, who, in return for so great a generosity of the elements, still bears with men who pay the debt of thanks to idols more readily than to him; who is truly kind in spiritual benefits too, for “the words of the Lord are sweeter than honey and the honeycomb”? He, then, reproached the ungrateful who deserved to find them grateful, he whose suns and rains you too, Marcion, have enjoyed ungratefully. But your god could not yet complain of the ungrateful, since he had not yet made anyone grateful.

Commanding mercy too, he says: “Be merciful, as your Father has had mercy on you.” This will mean: “Break your bread for the hungry, and bring into your house (the one) without a roof, and if you see the naked, cover him,” and: “Judge for the orphan and justify the widow.” I recognize the old teaching of him who prefers mercy to sacrifice. Or if another has now commanded mercy because he too is merciful, why was he not merciful to me through so long an age?

“Do not judge, that you may not be judged; do not condemn, that you may not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down and running over, they will give into your lap. With the same measure with which you have measured, it will be measured back to you.” As I think, these words speak of a repayment called forth according to deserts. From whom, then, is the repayment? If from men only, then he teaches a human discipline and a human reward, and we shall obey men in everything; if from the Creator, as judge and assessor of deserts, then he is driving our obedience toward the one with whom he has placed the repayment to be sought or feared, according as each has judged or condemned or forgiven or measured; if from himself, then he too already judges, which Marcion denies. Let the Marcionites choose, then, whether falling away from their master's rule is not worth as much to them as having a Christ who teaches on behalf of either men or the Creator. But “the blind leads the blind into the pit.” Some correct Marcion. But “the disciple is not above his master.” Apelles, Marcion's corrector who had been his disciple, ought to have remembered this. Let the heretic take the beam out of his own eye too; then let him convict the straw, if he thinks there is one, in the Christian's eye. Just as a good tree does not bear bad fruit, because truth does not bear heresy, nor a bad tree good fruit, because heresy does not bear truth, so neither did Marcion bring out anything good from the bad treasure of Cerdo, nor Apelles from Marcion's. For we shall apply these things, which Christ spoke allegorically of men, far more fittingly to these very people, not to two gods, as Marcion's stumbling would have it.

I think I am not rash in keeping to this line all this while, by which I determine that no other god at all has been revealed by Christ — at this point alone I marvel that Marcion's adulterating hands grew numb, unless it is that even robbers are afraid; no evil deed is (without) fear, because none is without its own guilty awareness —: so long, then, the Jews too knew no other god than the one besides whom they had until then known none, nor called any other Lord than the one whom alone they knew. If this is so, who will seem to have said: “Why do you call (me) ‘Lord, Lord’?” Was it he who had never been called this, since he had never yet been made known, or he who was always regarded as Lord, being known from the beginning, namely the God of the Jews? Likewise, who could have added: “And you do not do what I say”? Was it he who was only then trying to teach them, or he who from the beginning had sent them the words of the law and the prophets? He who could reproach them with disobedience even if he had never reproached them elsewhere? Moreover, he who before Christ had declared, “This people loves me with their lips, but their heart stands far from me,” was surely charging them with their old stubbornness. Otherwise, how absurd that a new god, a new Christ, the enlightener of a religion new only just now, should pronounce stubborn and disobedient those whom he could not have tested!

So then, in praising the centurion's faith, it is incredible that he should have declared that he had not found such faith even in Israel, if the faith of Israel was no concern of his. Nor could it have concerned him from then on: still raw as it was, how could it be tested or compared, not to say that it did not yet exist? (But why should he not have been allowed to use the example of another's faith? Because, if that were so, (he would have said) that such faith had never been in Israel. But in saying that he ought to have found such faith in Israel, … and one who had come for this very purpose, to find it, namely the God and Christ of Israel. He would not have reproached it unless he were one who demanded and pursued it; a rival would rather have preferred it to be found as it was, since he had come rather to weaken and destroy it, not to approve it.

He also raised the widow's dead son. This is no new proof. The Creator's prophets had done this too; how much more his Son? So far, moreover, had Christ up to that moment brought in no other god, that all who were there gave the glory to the Creator, saying: “A great prophet has arisen among us, and God has looked upon his people.” Which God? Surely the one whose people they were and from whom the prophets came. But if they were glorifying the Creator, and Christ, hearing and knowing it, did not correct them, even when, in so great a proof as a dead man raised, they were still praying to the Creator, then without doubt either he was carrying about no other god than the one whom he allowed to be honored in his own benefits and mighty works, or what sort of thing is it that he bore with them in their error so long, when he came precisely to heal their error?

But (John is offended) on hearing of Christ's mighty works, as though they were another's. I will first explain the reason for the offense, so as the more easily to hiss the heretic's offense off the stage. Now that the Lord of powers himself, the Word and Spirit of the Father, was working and preaching on earth, the portion of the Holy Spirit which, after the pattern of the prophetic measure, had worked in John to prepare the Lord's ways had necessarily to withdraw from John, being gathered back into the Lord as into its whole mass. So John, now an ordinary man and one of the crowd, was indeed offended, but as a man, not as one hoping for or perceiving another Christ, since he had no ground for hoping for one, as he was teaching or doing nothing new. No one will be in doubt about someone whom he knows does not exist and neither hopes for nor perceives; but John was certain that there was no God besides the Creator, if only as a Jew, (not to say) also as a prophet. Clearly, one will more easily be in doubt about someone whom he knows to exist, while not knowing whether this is he. With this fear John too said: “Are you the one who comes, or do we look for another?”, simply asking whether the one he was expecting had come. For he supposed, as everyone thought, from the likeness of the proofs, that a prophet might meanwhile have been sent, distinct from another, that is, a greater, who was expected to come, namely the Lord himself. And so this was John's offense: that he doubted whether the one they were expecting had come, whom he ought to have recognized from the works foretold. (Or) is it that the Lord announced to John that he was to be recognized through these same works? Since these are established as foretold of the Creator's Christ, as we have shown point by point, it would be quite perverse for him to announce that he was to be understood as a Christ not the Creator's through the very things by which he compelled men rather to recognize the Creator's Christ. Much more perverse, if a Christ who is not John's also bears witness to John, confirming that he is a prophet, and indeed more than that, an angel, even citing what was written about him: “Behold, I send my angel before your face, who will prepare your way,” recalling the prophecy aptly in reference to the preceding question of the offended John, so that, by confirming that the forerunner John had already come, he might remove the scruple of that question: “Are you the one who comes, or do we look for another?” For since the forerunner had already performed his office and the Lord's way was prepared, he was to be understood as the one whom the forerunner had served. John was indeed greater than all born of women, but not therefore subject to him who was least in the kingdom of God, as if the kingdom, in which some lowly one will be greater than John, belonged to one god, and John, who is greater than all born of women, to another. For whether he speaks of any lowly person whatever or of himself in humility, because he was thought less than John, since everyone was running out into the wilderness to John rather than to Christ — “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” — it comes to the same thing: it befits the Creator both that John is his, greater than those born of women, and that Christ, or whatever lowly one will be greater than John in the kingdom (of God), is likewise the Creator's, and is greater than so great a prophet because he was not offended at Christ, which at that time made John less.

We have spoken of the forgiveness of sins. But the case of that sinful woman will serve this point: that when she pressed the Lord's feet with kisses, flooded them with tears, wiped them with her hair, and anointed them with ointment, she was handling the reality of a solid body, not an empty phantom; and that the sinful woman's repentance, in accordance with the Creator, earned pardon, which he is accustomed to put before sacrifice. And if the spur of repentance had come from faith, then she, justified through repentance that came from faith, heard from him: “Your faith has saved you,” from him who had declared through Habakkuk: “The righteous shall live by his faith.”

That wealthy women attached themselves to Christ and also ministered to him from their means, among them the wife of the king's steward, comes from prophecy. For he called these through Isaiah: “Rich women, rise up and hear my voice,” to show them first as disciples, then as workers and ministers: “Daughters, in hope hear (my) words; remember the day of the year with labor in hope”; for with labor they followed him, and in hope they ministered.

Likewise, regarding parables, let it suffice to have proved once that this kind of speech was promised by the Creator. But now that saying of his to the people too, “With the ear you will hear and not hear,” gave Christ reason to press home often: “He who has ears, let him hear,” not as though Christ, being a different god, granted a hearing which the Creator had taken away, but because exhortation followed the threat. For those who had ears were not hearing of their own accord; he was showing that the ears of the heart were needed, with which the Creator had said they would not hear; and therefore through Christ he adds: “Take heed how you hear,” that is, lest you hear with the ear and not hear, hearing, that is, not with the heart but with the ear. If you fit a worthy sense to the saying, according to the mind of him who was rousing them to hear, then even by saying “Take heed how you hear” he was threatening those who would not hear. Surely the most gentle god does not threaten, since he neither judges nor is angry. This is proved also by the sense that follows: “To him who has, more will be given, but from him who has not, even what he thinks he has will be taken away.” What will be given? An increase of faith or of understanding, or salvation itself. What will be taken away? Surely what will be given. By whom will it be given, and taken away? If it is taken away by the Creator, it will also be given by him; if it is given by Marcion's god, it will also be taken away by him. Yet under whatever name he threatens the taking away, it will not belong to the god who does not know how to threaten, who knows nothing of anger. But I marvel that he should say a lamp is not usually hidden, he who had hidden himself through so long an age, a greater and more necessary light; that he should promise to bring everything out of secrecy into the open, he who keeps his god in shadow even until now, waiting, I suppose, for Marcion to be born.

We come to the argument most constantly used by all who dispute the Lord's birth. He himself, they say, testifies that he was not born, by saying: “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” So heretics always either snatch plain and simple words by conjecture to whatever sense they wish, or on the other hand dissolve words that are conditional and reasoned by treating them as simple, as in this place. We, on the contrary, say first that it could not have been announced to him that his mother and brothers were standing outside seeking to see him, if he had had no mother and no brothers; the one who announced it surely knew them, either known from before or learned then and there, while they were desiring to see him or while they themselves were sending the message. To this first proposition of ours the other side usually replies: (What if it was announced to him in order to test him? But Scripture does not say this; and just as it usually indicates when something was done by way of testing — “Behold, a lawyer stood up, testing him,” and on the question of tribute: “And the Pharisees came to him, testing him” — so, where it makes no mention of testing, it does not admit an interpretation of testing. And yet, more than is needed, I demand the reasons for the test: for what purpose would they have tested him by naming his mother and brothers? If it was to learn whether he had been born or not, when was this ever in question, that they should settle it by that test? Who would doubt that one he saw to be a man had been born? One he had heard declare himself the Son of Man? One whom, seeing every human quality in him, he would hesitate to believe God or the Son of God, more readily thinking him a prophet, however great, but surely born? Even if he had had to be tested to probe his birth, any other proof would have suited the test better than a mention of those persons whom he could have lacked even though born. Tell me, does a mother outlive everyone who is born? Are brothers born after everyone who is born? May one not rather have fathers and sisters, or even no one? Besides, it is established that a census had then been taken in Judea under Augustus by Sentius Saturninus, in whose records they could have inquired into his family. So the theory of this testing does not stand at all; his mother and brothers truly were standing outside, and it remains to discern the sense of one who says, not simply, “Who is my mother or my brothers?” as though denying his family and birth, but out of the necessity of the case and on a reasoned condition. For when persons so close stood outside, while strangers inside were intent on his words, and moreover sought to call him away from his solemn work, he was rightly indignant; he did not so much deny them as disown them. And so, when he had first said, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?”, and then added, “except those who hear my words and do them,” he transferred the names of blood to others, whom he judged closer on account of faith. But no one transfers anything except one who has what he transfers. If, then, he made mother and brothers of those who were not, how did he deny those who were? Rather, by this very thing he the more confessed that he had a mother and brothers, in that he refused to acknowledge them, on the condition of deserts, that is, not by denying his kin, teaching in his own person that whoever put father or mother or brothers before the word of God was not a worthy disciple. By adopting others he confirmed those whom he denied because of offense, putting the others in their place not as more real but as more worthy. In short, it would be nothing great if he put faith before a blood kinship that he did not have.

But who is this who commands the winds and the sea? (No doubt a new ruler and owner of the elements, now that the Creator has been subdued and shut out. Not so. Rather, these substances recognized their own maker, they who had been used to obeying even his servants. Look into Exodus, Marcion: see the rod of Moses commanding the Red Sea, vaster than all the lakes of Judea, so that, split to its depths and held fixed on either side in equal astonishment at the division, it let the people pass over dry-shod by a path through its very bowels, and again, at the nod of the same rod, as nature returned, overwhelmed the Egyptian army as the waves came together; and the south winds too served that work. Read also that at its crossing the Jordan was a sword for dividing … family by lot, whose rush and downward course Joshua too had plainly taught to stand still while the prophets passed over. (What have you to say to this? If he is your Christ, he will not be more powerful than the Creator's servants. But I would have used only these examples if a prediction of this voyage on the sea had not also gone before Christ. For when he crosses the lake, a psalm is fulfilled: “The Lord,” it says, “upon many waters”; when he scatters the waves of the lake, Habakkuk is fulfilled: “Scattering waters on his way”; when the sea is dashed down at his threats, Nahum too is discharged: “Threatening the sea,” he says, “and drying it up,” surely along with the winds by which it was being stirred up. From which do you want my Christ to be vindicated? From the examples or from the prophets of the Creator?

Come now, you who think that a military and armed warrior is foretold, not figuratively or allegorically, one who would win a spiritual war against spiritual enemies with spiritual soldiery and spiritual weapons, spiritually: when you find in one man a multitude of demons calling itself a legion, surely a spiritual one, learn that Christ too is to be understood as the conqueror of spiritual enemies, spiritually armed and spiritually warlike, and that he is the very one who was to fight even with a legion of demons, so that the psalm may be seen to have spoken of this war too: “The Lord strong, the Lord mighty in battle.” For when he was to do battle with the last enemy, death, he triumphed through the trophy of the cross. But of which God did the legion testify that Jesus was the Son? Without doubt of the one whose torments and abyss they knew and feared. For they can hardly have been ignorant until then of what the power of a new and unknown god was working on earth, because it is not likely that the Creator was ignorant of it. For even if he had once been ignorant of another god above himself, yet he had surely found him out by now, acting beneath his own heaven. And what the master had found out would by now have become known to his whole household too, … in the same world and within the same circuit of heaven in which the foreign divinity was moving about. To the extent, then, that the Creator and his substance would have known of it, had it existed, to that extent it did not exist, because the demons knew no other Christ than the Christ of their own God. For they would not have begged from another what they remembered they must beg from the Creator, namely to be spared the Creator's abyss. And in the end they obtained it. For what merit? Because they had lied, because they had made him the son of a cruel god? And what kind of god will he be who helped liars and put up with slanderers? But no: because they had not lied, because they had recognized him as the God of the abyss and as their own, he himself thereby confirmed that he was the one whom the demons recognized, Jesus, Son of the God who judges and avenges.

Here is something too of those petty traits and weaknesses of the Creator in Christ — for I too wish to ascribe ignorance to him; allow me this against the heretic —: he is touched by a woman who was flowing with blood, and he did not know by whom. “Who touched me?” he says. Even when the disciples make excuses, he persists in the language of ignorance: “Someone touched me,” and he affirms it from evidence: “For I perceived that power had gone out from me.” What does the heretic say? Did he know the person? Then why did he speak as though he did not know? Surely to call forth her confession, to test her fear. So too (the Creator) once asked, as though he did not know: “Adam, where are you?” You have both the Creator excused along with Christ and Christ made equal to the Creator. (But this too, they say, he did as an opponent of the law: because the law keeps a bleeding woman from touching, he was eager not only to allow her touch but even to grant her healing. O god, beneficent not by nature but by rivalry! But if we find that the woman's faith merited this, since he said, “Your faith has saved you,” who are you to read rivalry with the law into this deed, which the Lord himself shows was done as a reward for faith? But you want to make this the woman's faith, that she had despised the law. And who could believe that a woman who was not yet aware of any (new) god, not yet initiated into any new law, would break through the law by which she was still bound? In short, by what faith did she break through it? Believing in what god? Despising the Creator for whom? Surely she touched him by faith in him. If by faith in the Creator, which knew no other god, how did she break through his law? For she broke through it, if she did, precisely as far as from faith in the Creator. But how will both fit together, that she both broke through it and broke through it by faith in the one on whose account she ought not to have broken through it? I will tell you. Her faith was first this: she trusted that her God prefers mercy to sacrifice itself, and she was sure that this God was at work in Christ. If with this faith she touched him, it was not as a holy man nor as a prophet, whom she would know could be defiled because of his human substance, but as God himself, who she had assumed could be polluted by no uncleanness. So she did not rashly interpret the law for herself as meaning that those things are defiled which are capable of defilement, not God, whom she trusted was in Christ. She also reflected that what the law regulates is the regular and customary flow of menstrual blood or of childbirth, which comes from the working of nature, not from a defect of health; but hers was overflowing from a defect of health, for which she knew that what was needed was not a limit of time but the help of divine mercy; and so she can be seen not to have broken through the law but to have drawn a distinction within it. This will be the faith that had also brought understanding: “Unless you believe,” he says, “you will not understand.” Approving this faith of the woman, who believed only in the Creator, Christ answered that he was the God of the faith which he approved. Nor will I pass over this: when his garment was touched, a garment surely put on a body and not on a phantom, a body too was being demonstrated; not as though we were going over this ground again, but because it bears on the present question. For if there was no reality of a body, a phantom, being an empty thing, surely could not be defiled. How then could one who cannot be defiled, because of the emptiness of his substance, have wanted it, as a rival of the law? He was lying, since he was not truly being polluted.

He sends the disciples out to preach the kingdom of God. Did he even here make known whose? He forbids them to carry anything on the journey for food or clothing. Who would have commanded this, except the one who both feeds the ravens and clothes the flowers of the field, who long before had commanded that the ox treading out the grain should have its mouth left free, so that it might be permitted to take fodder from its work, because the worker is worthy of his wage? Let Marcion delete these things, so long as their sense remains intact. But when he commands them to shake the dust off their feet against those by whom they had not been received, he orders this too to be done as a testimony. No one bears witness to what is not destined for judgment: one who orders inhospitality to be turned into testimony is threatening as a judge.

That no new god had been established by Christ was declared also by the common opinion of all, in which some asserted to Herod that Christ Jesus was John, others Elijah, others one of the old prophets. Whichever of these he had been, he surely would not have been raised for this purpose, to preach another god after his resurrection.

He feeds the people in the wilderness, after the ancient custom, of course. Or, if the majesty is not the same, then he is now less than the Creator, who sustained, not for one day but for forty years, not from lesser materials of bread and fish but from heavenly manna, not about five thousand but six hundred thousand men. But the majesty was so much (the same) that he willed the scantiness of the food not only to suffice but even to abound, after the ancient example. For so too, in the time of famine under Elijah, the small and last provisions of the widow of Zarephath had overflowed through the whole time of the famine by the prophet's blessing. You have the third book of Kingdoms. If you unroll the fourth as well, you will find this whole procedure of Christ in the case of that man of God who, when ten barley loaves were offered to him, ordered them to be distributed to the people; and when his servant, likewise comparing the multitude with the meagerness of the food, answered: “What then? Shall I set this before a hundred men?”, he said: “Give, and they will eat, for thus says the Lord: They will eat and leave some over,” according to the word of the Lord. O Christ, old even in what is new!

So Peter, who had seen these things and compared them with those of old, and had recognized them not only as deeds of the past but as already then prophesying the future, when the Lord asked who he seemed to them to be and he answered for all, “You are the Christ,” cannot have perceived him to be any Christ but the one he knew in the Scriptures, whom he was now recognizing in deeds. Christ himself confirms this too, bearing with it thus far, and indeed enjoining silence. For if Peter could not confess him as other than the Creator's Christ, and he commanded them to tell no one, surely what he did not want published was what Peter had perceived. No, you say: because Peter had not perceived rightly, he did not want a lie spread about. But he declared another reason for silence: that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and scribes and priests and be killed and rise again after the third day. Since these things too were foretold of the Creator's Christ, as we shall fully show in their places, in this way too he shows himself to be the one of whom they were foretold. Certainly, even if they had not been foretold, the reason he gave for the silence he imposed was one which showed no error of Peter's: the necessity of undergoing his sufferings.

“Whoever wishes,” he says, “to save his soul will lose it, and whoever loses it for my sake will save it.” Certainly the Son of Man uttered this sentence. Look, then, you too, together with the king of Babylon, into his burning furnace, and you will find there one like a son of man — for he was not yet truly so, not yet born of a human being — already then establishing these outcomes. He saves the souls of the three brothers, who had agreed to lose them for God, but he destroyed those of the Chaldeans, which they had preferred to save by idolatry. What is this new teaching, whose proofs are old? And indeed predictions of martyrdoms too have run their course, both of those to come and of those who would receive a reward from God: “See,” says Isaiah, “how the righteous man perished, and no one takes it to heart; and righteous men are taken away, and no one considers it.” When does this happen more than in persecution? … of his saints, surely not a simple death, nor one common by the law of nature, but that distinguished death, the soldier's death for the faith, in which whoever loses his soul for God's sake keeps it; so that here too you may recognize a judge, who will repay the soul's evil gain with its loss and the soul's good loss with its salvation. And he shows me a jealous God, returning evil for evil: “Whoever is ashamed of me,” he says, “of him will I also be ashamed.” … since the matter for shame fits none but my Christ, whose course is the more shameful in that it lies open even to the insults of heretics, who declaim with all the bitterness they can upon the whole foulness of his birth and upbringing and on the unworthiness of the flesh itself. But how will the other be liable to shame, when he is incapable of it? — he was not curdled in a womb, even though a virgin's, still a woman's, … and, even if not from seed, yet by the law of bodily substance, out of blood and fluid; he was not held to be flesh before he had form, nor called a mere animal thing after he took shape; he was not released after the torment of ten months, nor poured out onto the ground through the body's sewer, with the sudden shock of pains, along with the filth of so long a time; he did not greet the light at once with tears, from the first wound of his cord; he was not washed well, nor treated with salt and honey, nor initiated in swaddling clothes into what is already a burial wrapping, nor rolled thereafter through uncleanness from lap to lap, a nuisance at the breasts, long an infant, hardly a boy, late a man; no, he was set down from heaven, grown all at once, whole all at once, instantly Christ, spirit and power and God only. Moreover, (being) not real, since he was not seen, he was not to be blushed for on account of the curse of the cross either, whose reality he lacked, lacking a body. So he could not have said, “Whoever is ashamed of me.” Our Christ is the one who must have declared this, made a little lower than the angels by the Father, a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and the scorn of the people, to the extent that he willed, so that we might be healed by his bruise, so that our salvation might consist in his disgrace. And rightly he humbled himself for his own man, for his own image and likeness, not another's, so that, since man had (not) blushed to worship stone and wood, with the same boldness, unashamed of Christ, he might make satisfaction to God for the shamelessness of idolatry by the shamelessness of faith. Which of these things fits your Christ, Marcion, to make him deserve shame? Plainly you ought to be ashamed that you made him up yourself.

Now you ought to have blushed most of all at this: that you allow him to be seen, on the retreat of the mountain, with Moses and Elijah, whom he had come to destroy. This, no doubt, is what that voice from heaven meant to be understood: “This is my beloved Son; hear him,” that is, no longer Moses and Elijah. Then the voice alone would have been enough, without a display of Moses and Elijah. For by defining whom they should hear, he would have forbidden any others whatever to be heard. Or did he allow Isaiah and Jeremiah and the rest, whom he did not display, to be heard, if he forbade those whom he displayed? Now, even if their presence was necessary, surely they would not have been shown in conversation with him, which is a sign of intimacy, nor sharing his glory, which is a token of esteem and favor, but in some squalor, which is a proof of destruction; or rather in the Creator's darkness, which he had been sent to scatter, set far apart even from the glory of Christ, who was going to separate their very words and writings from his gospel. Is this how he shows them to be strangers, by keeping them with him? Is this how one should abandon those whom he joins to himself? Is this how he destroys those whom he builds up with his own rays? What would their own Christ have done? I suppose, by this perversity, he would have revealed them as Marcion's Christ ought to have done, or would (have shown) any others at all with him rather than his own prophets. But what is so proper to the Creator's Christ as to show his own heralds with him? To be seen with those to whom he had appeared in revelations? To speak with those who had spoken of him? To share his glory with those by whom he had been called the Lord of glory? With his chief servants, one of whom was once the shaper of the people and the other at some time its reshaper, one the initiator of the old testament and the other the finisher of the new? So Peter too, recognizing the fitting company of his Christ, suggests a plan for keeping him (in) their company: “It is good for us to be here” — good indeed, where Moses and Elijah are, of course — “and let us make three tabernacles here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (But not knowing what he said. How not knowing? Was it by simple error, or on the principle by which we maintain, in the cause of the new prophecy, that ecstasy, that is, being out of one's mind, belongs to grace? For a man placed in the Spirit, especially when he beholds the glory of God or when God speaks through him, must of necessity lose his senses, being overshadowed, that is, by the divine power. Although there is a dispute on this between us and the psychics, meanwhile it is easy to prove that Peter was out of his mind. For how would he have recognized Moses and Elijah — for the people had no images or statues of them, nor likenesses, since the law forbade them — except because he had seen them in the Spirit? And so what he said, being placed in the Spirit and not in his senses, he could not know. But if he did not know in the sense of erring, because he thought the Christ belonged to them, then it is established that earlier too, when Christ asked whom they thought him to be, Peter said, “You are the Christ,” of the Creator's Christ; because, if he had then recognized him as another god's, he would not have erred here either. But if he erred here because he had erred earlier too, then you are certain that up to that day no new divinity had been revealed by Christ, that Peter had not erred up to then, since Christ up to then had revealed nothing of the kind, and that Christ must be reckoned no other's than the Creator's all that time, whose whole pattern he expressed here too. He takes three of his disciples as witnesses of the vision and voice to come. This too is the Creator's way: “On three witnesses,” he says, “every word shall stand.” He withdraws up a mountain. I recognize the pattern of the place. For the Creator too had initiated the ancient people at a mountain, with a vision and with his voice. It was fitting that the new testament should be sealed on that platform on which the old had been written, and under the same enveloping cloud, which no one will doubt was massed together from the Creator's air — unless he had brought down his own clouds too — since he too had forced his way through the Creator's sky. Or did he likewise use the Creator's cloud on loan? So neither now was the cloud mute, but there was the accustomed voice from heaven, and the Father's new testimony about the Son, to whom he says in the second psalm: “You are my Son; today I have begotten you,” and of whom also through Isaiah: “Who fears God? Let him hear the voice of his Son.” So, presenting him now — “This is my Son” — surely he implies: whom I promised. For if he once promised and afterward says, “This is he,” it belongs to one who once promised to use such words when pointing out the one promised, not to one to whom it could be answered: ‘Who are you yourself, to say, “This is my Son,” of whom you gave no more notice beforehand than you revealed yourself, what you were before?’ “Hear him,” then! Whom? (Who but the one whom) from the beginning he had declared must be heard, under the name of a prophet, since he was also to be thought a prophet by the people: “A prophet,” says Moses, “God will raise up for us from your sons” — according to fleshly descent, that is — “you shall hear him as you hear me. And everyone who will not hear him, his soul shall be cut off from his people.” So too Isaiah: “Who among you fears (God)? Let him hear the voice of his Son,” a voice which the Father himself was going to commend: “establishing,” he says, “the words of his Son,” namely by saying: “This is my beloved Son; hear him.” So even if the hearing was transferred from Moses and Elijah to Christ, it was not as from another god nor to another Christ, but from the Creator to his Christ, in keeping with the departure of the old testament and the succession of the new: “Not an envoy,” says Isaiah, “nor a messenger, but God himself will save them,” now himself preaching and fulfilling the law and the prophets. So the Father handed the new disciples over to the Son, after Moses and Elijah had first been shown with him in the privilege of glory and then dismissed, as though now discharged from both office and honor, so that this very point might be confirmed, for Marcion's sake: that Christ shares even his glory with Moses and Elijah.

The whole shape of this vision we have also in Habakkuk, where the Spirit speaks at times in the person of the apostles: “Lord, I have heard your report and was afraid” — at what, more than at that heavenly voice, “This is my beloved Son; hear him”? — “I considered your work (and) was out of my mind” — when more than when Peter, having seen his glory, did not know what he said? — “In the midst of two living creatures you will be known,” that is, Moses and Elijah, whom Zechariah too saw in the figure of two olive trees and two olive branches. For these are the ones of whom it was said to him: “The two sons of fatness stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” And again the same Habakkuk: “His power covered the heavens,” surely with that cloud, “and his splendor will be like light,” surely the light with which even his clothing shone. And if we recall the promise to Moses, it will be found fulfilled here. For Moses had longed for the sight of the Lord, saying: “If then I have found favor before you, show yourself to me, that I may see you knowingly,” longing for that sight in which the Lord would be acting as a man, as the prophet knew — for the face of God, he had already heard, no man shall see and live —; and the Lord said: “This word too, which you have spoken, I will do for you.” And again Moses: “Show me your glory.” And the Lord likewise, of the future: “I will go before you in my glory,” and the rest. And at the end: “And then you will see my back parts,” not the loins or the calves, but the glory he had longed for, to be revealed in the latter times, in which he had promised that he would be visible to him face to face, saying also to Aaron: “And if there is a prophet among you, I will be known to him in a vision and will speak to him in a vision, not as to Moses; mouth to mouth will I speak to him, in form” — surely the form of the man he was going to bear — “not in a riddle.” For even if Marcion did not want him shown conversing with the Lord, but only standing there, yet even standing he stood mouth to mouth and face to face — “with him,” it says, “not apart from him” — in his very glory, not merely in his sight. From that glory he departed from Christ illumined no differently than he used to depart from the Creator, dazzling the eyes of the sons of Israel then, just as now those of blinded Marcion, who did not see that this argument too tells against him.

I take upon myself the part of Israel. Let Marcion's Christ stand there and cry out: “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” At once he will have to hear from me: “Whoever you are, O steward, first declare who you are, and from whom you come, and what right you have over us. Up to now everything about you is the Creator's. Plainly, if you come from him and act for him, we accept the rebuke. But if you come from another, I would like you to tell us: what have you ever entrusted to us of your own, which we ought to have believed, that you reproach us with unbelief, you who have never even revealed yourself to us? How long ago did you begin to deal with us, that you complain of the time? In what have you borne with us, that you charge us with your patience? You come just now, like Aesop's ass out of the well, and already you are braying.” Who would not have thrown back the injustice of the rebuke in this way, if he believed that it came from one who had as yet no right to complain? Except that he would not have sprung upon them either, had he not long before lodged among them in the law, in the prophets, in mighty works and benefits, and always found them unbelieving.

But look, Christ loves little children, teaching that those who always want to be greater ought to be like them, whereas the Creator set bears on boys, avenging the prophet Elisha for the insults he had suffered from them. A shameless enough antithesis, which pits such different things against each other, little children and boys, an age still innocent and an age already capable of judgment, which could insult, not to say blaspheme. As a just God, then, he did not spare even impious boys, requiring honor for greater age, and surely all the more from those younger; but as a good God he loves little children so much that in Egypt he did good to the midwives who protected the Hebrew births endangered by Pharaoh's edict. So this affection of Christ's too he shares with the Creator. Now then, how can Marcion's god, who opposes marriage, seem to be a lover of little children, whose whole cause is marriage? One who hates the seed must necessarily loathe the fruit as well. Indeed, he must be held more cruel than the king of Egypt. For Pharaoh did not allow infants to be reared; this god does not allow them even to be born, taking from them even their ten months of life in the womb. How much more credible that affection for little children should be credited to him who, by blessing marriage for the propagation of the human race, promised that the very fruit of marriage too would be blessed, a fruit which begins with infancy!

The Creator, at Elijah's request, brings down the plague of fire in the case of that false prophet. I recognize the judge's severity; on the other hand I recognize (the gentleness of Christ rebuking) the disciples who intended the same punishment for that little village of the Samaritans. Let the heretic too recognize that this gentleness of Christ was promised by the same most severe judge: “He will not strive,” he says, “nor (cry out, nor) will his voice be heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench.” Such a one would surely be much less likely to burn men up. For even then it was said to Elijah: “The Lord is not in the fire, but in the gentle breeze.”

But why does the most kindly Lord refuse the man who offers himself to him as so inseparable a companion? If it was because he had said proudly or hypocritically, “I will follow you wherever you go,” then by judging that either pride or hypocrisy must be refused he acted as a judge. And surely he condemned the man whom he refused, as one who would not attain salvation. For just as he calls to salvation the one he does not refuse, or even the one he calls of his own accord, so he condemns to perdition the one he refuses. And when he answers the one who pleaded his father's burial, “Let the dead bury their dead; but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God,” he plainly confirmed both laws of the Creator: that on the priesthood in Leviticus, which forbids priests to attend even the funerals of their parents — “The priest,” it says, “shall not go in to any dead soul, and he shall not be defiled for his father (or for his mother)” — and that on the vow in Numbers; for there too he commands the one who has vowed himself to God, among other things, not to go in to any dead soul, not even that of father or mother or brother. And I suppose he was destining for the vow and for the priesthood the man whom he had charged with preaching the kingdom of God. Or if this is not so, he must be pronounced impious indeed, commanding sons to disregard their parents' burial with no reason of the law coming between. And when he forbids that third man, who was preparing first to say farewell to his family, to look back, he follows the Creator's course: this too the Creator had not wanted done by those whom he had delivered from Sodom.

He appointed also seventy other apostles besides the twelve. For why twelve, after the number of the springs at Elim, if not also seventy, after the number of the palm trees there? The Antitheses were produced mostly by a difference of circumstances, not of powers. But one who paid no attention to the difference of circumstances easily supposed it to be a difference of powers. The Creator led the departure of the sons of Israel out of Egypt loaded even with that plunder of gold and silver vessels and garments, besides the burdens of dough, whereas Christ directed his disciples not to carry even a staff on the journey. For the former were being sent forward into a wilderness, the latter were being sent into cities. Consider the difference of circumstances, and you will understand that it is one and the same power which arranged the expedition of its people according to want and plenty: cutting down the supplies of those who would have abundance through the cities, just as it had equipped those who would be in want through the wilderness. He forbade them even to carry shoes. For he was the very one under whom the people, even in the wilderness for so many years, had not worn out their shoes. “Salute no one,” he says, “on the way.” O Christ, destroyer of the prophets, from whom he received even this! Elisha, when he sent his servant Gehazi on the way to raise the Shunammite woman's son from death, gave him, I think, this command: “Gird up your loins and take my staff in your hand and go: whomever you meet on the way, do not bless him,” that is, do not greet him, “and whoever blesses you, do not answer him,” that is, do not return his greeting. For what is a blessing on the roads but the mutual greeting of those who meet? So too the Lord's command, that in whatever house they entered they should say “peace” to it, comes from the same example. For Elisha commanded this too: when he came to the Shunammite woman, he should say to her: “Peace to your husband, peace to your son.” These rather will be our antitheses, which compare Christ with the Creator, not separate him. And who would more fittingly declare “The worker is worthy of his wage” than God the judge? For this very thing is judging: deeming a worker worthy of his wage. No repayment has ever been settled except by a judgment. Now here too the Creator's law is sealed, since he judges even working oxen to be workers worthy of their wage: “You shall not bind the mouth,” he says, “of the ox that treads out the grain.” Who is so generous toward men as one who is so even toward cattle? And if Christ too declares workers worthy of their wage, he has vindicated that command of the Creator to carry off the gold and silver vessels of the Egyptians. For those who had worked on estates and cities for the Egyptians, surely workers worthy of their wage, were not incited to fraud but to the settling of their wage, which they could not otherwise exact from their masters.

He confirmed in this way too that the kingdom of God was neither new nor unheard of, when he commanded that it be announced as having drawn near. For what was once far off can be said to have drawn near. But if it had never existed before it drew near, it could not have been said to have drawn near, since it had never been far off. Everything new and unknown is sudden. Everything sudden, when it is announced, only then first takes on an appearance and only then first receives a time. Moreover, it could neither have been delayed in the past, so long as it was not announced, nor have drawn near from the time it began to be announced. He adds also that they should say to those who had not received them: “Know nevertheless that the kingdom of God has drawn near.” If he does not command this by way of threat as well, he commands it quite pointlessly. For what was it to them if the kingdom drew near, unless it draws near with judgment? — for the salvation, that is, of those who had received its announcement, … So, since a threat is impossible without execution, you have in the one who threatens a God who executes, and a judge in both. So too he orders the dust to be shaken off against them, as a testimony that even their soil was renounced, much more any other fellowship. For if inhumanity and inhospitality were to receive no vengeance from him, for what purpose does he send a testimony ahead, which surely portends threats? Moreover, since the Creator too in Deuteronomy forbids the Ammonites and Moabites to be received into the assembly because they had inhumanly and inhospitably cheated the people setting out from Egypt of provisions, it will be clear that the ban on fellowship flowed into Christ from there, where it has its pattern. “Whoever despises you despises me.” This the Creator said to Moses too: “They have not despised you but me.” For Moses was as much an apostle as the apostles were prophets. The authority of both offices had to be made equal by one and the same Lord of apostles and prophets.

Now who will give power to tread upon snakes and scorpions? The Lord of all animals, or the god of not even one lizard? But it is well that the Creator promised this power even to little children through Isaiah: to put their hand into the hole of asps and into the den of young asps and not be harmed at all. And surely we know — without prejudice to the plain sense of Scripture, for even the beasts themselves will not be able to harm where there is faith — that scorpions and snakes figuratively signify the spiritual forces of wickedness, whose prince himself is reckoned by the Creator under the name of the serpent and the dragon and every most prominent beast; and that the Creator granted this power first to his own Christ, as the ninetieth psalm says to him: “You will walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you will trample the lion and the dragon”; and as Isaiah too says: “In that day the Lord God will bring his holy sword, great and strong” — his Christ, that is — “upon that dragon, the great and twisting serpent, and will kill it in that day.” And when the same prophet says, “It will be called a clean way and a holy way, and nothing unclean will pass over it, nor will there be an unclean way there; but those who have been scattered will walk in it and will not go astray; and there will no longer be a lion there, nor will any of the evil beasts go up on it, nor will one be found there,” since he shows the way to be faith, by which we shall reach God, he is already then promising to that same way, that is, to faith, this disabling and subjection of the beasts. In fact you will find that the times of the promise also agree, if you read what precedes: “Be strong, hands that hang down and knees that are loosened: then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will hear; then the lame man will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will be clear.” So when he had brought out the benefits of healing, then too he subjected scorpions and serpents to his saints: he, namely, who had first received this power from the Father, so that he might grant it to others also, and who displayed it in the order in which it had been foretold.

Who will be invoked as Lord of heaven, who has not first been shown to be its maker? For he says: “I thank you and confess you, Lord of heaven, because you have revealed to little ones the things that were hidden from the wise and prudent.” What things? And whose? Hidden by whom? Revealed by whom? By Marcion's god, hidden and revealed, when he had put forth nothing at all beforehand in which anything could have been hidden: no prophecies, no parables, no visions, no proofs of things or words or names overshadowed by allegories and figures or by the clouds of riddles? But he had hidden, they say, his very greatness, which he was just then revealing through Christ. That is unjust enough. For what wrong had the wise and prudent done, that God should be hidden from them, when their wisdom and prudence had not been enough to know him, since he himself had given them no way, through any proclamation of his works or any traces, by which the wise and prudent might be led to him? And even if they had offended in some way against a god unknown — suppose it — and now known, still they ought not to have found him jealous, since he is presented as unlike the Creator. So if he had neither put forth materials in which he could have concealed something, nor had guilty persons from whom to conceal it, nor ought to have concealed it even if he had had them, then neither will the revealer be he who was not the concealer — and so neither Lord of heaven nor Father of Christ — but rather that other one, to whom all these things apply. For he both concealed, having first put forth the instrument of prophetic obscurity, the understanding of which faith would earn — for “unless you believe, you will not understand” — and he had guilty persons, the wise and prudent, who did not seek God, though he could be understood from so many and such great works, or philosophized wrongly about him and supplied the heretics with their ideas; and lastly he is jealous. In fact long ago he proclaimed through Isaiah what Christ gives thanks for: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will hide the prudence of the prudent,” just as elsewhere too he indicates both that he has hidden (himself) and that he will reveal: “And I will give them hidden treasures; I will open to them invisible things,” and again: “Who else will scatter the signs of ventriloquists and divinations from the heart, turning the wise backward and making their thoughts foolish?” And if he also designated his Christ as the enlightener of the nations — “I have set you for a light of the nations” — whom we interpret under the name of little ones, since formerly they were little ones in understanding and infants in imprudence, and now are small also in the humility of faith, we shall surely more easily believe that the same one who formerly hid, and who promised a revelation through Christ, has also revealed to little ones through Christ. Or if Marcion's god laid open the things that had formerly been hidden by the Creator, then he was already doing the Creator's business, expounding his affairs. But (it was for their destruction, you say,) to expose them. Then he ought to have exposed them to those from whom the Creator hid them, the wise and prudent. For if he was acting out of kindness, knowledge ought to have been granted to those to whom it had been denied, not to the little ones, from whom the Creator had withheld nothing. And yet up to now, I think, we are proving that what is found in Christ is the building up of the law and the prophets rather than their destruction.

He says that all things have been delivered to him by the Father. You may believe it if Christ is the Creator's, to whom all things belong, and because the Creator delivered to no lesser son all the things he founded through him, through his Word, that is. But if he is that other steward, what are the (all things) that were delivered to him by the Father? Are they the Creator's? Then what the Father delivered to the Son are good things, and the Creator is now good, since all his things are good; and that other is now not good, since he invaded another's goods to deliver them to his son, he who teaches us to keep our hands off what is another's. Surely he is the most beggarly of all, who had nothing with which to enrich even his son except from another's property. Or if nothing of the Creator's was delivered to him by the Father, how does he claim for himself the Creator's man? Or if only man was delivered to him, man is not all things. But Scripture declares that a delivering of (all things) was made to the Son. And even if you interpret (all things) of the races of men, that is, of all the nations, to deliver these too to the Son is the Creator's act: “I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” Or if he too had some (all things) of his own to deliver to his son together with the Creator's man, show me some single one of those (all things) as a pledge, as a sample, so that I may not refuse to believe, with as much reason, that all things belong to him of whom I see nothing, as I believe, with reason, that even the things I do not see belong to him to whom belong all the things I do see.

But “no one knows who the Father is except the Son, and who the Son is except the Father” “and anyone to whom the Son reveals him”; and so Christ preached an unknown god. For other heretics too prop themselves up on this, objecting that the Creator is known to all, to Israel by familiarity and to the nations by nature. And how is it that he himself testifies that he was known neither to Israel — “But Israel has not known me, and the people has not understood me” — nor to the nations? “For behold,” he says, “of the nations there is no one.” That is why he counted them as a drop from a bucket, and Zion as a watchtower left in a vineyard. See then whether this is not a confirmation of the prophetic voice reproaching mankind's ignorance of God, which lasted right up to the Son. For this is why he added that the Father is known by the one to whom the Son reveals him: because he was the very one who was announced as set by the Father for a light of the nations, which were to be enlightened about God, surely, and a light of Israel too, surely through a fuller knowledge of God. So arguments that can apply to the Creator will not serve faith in another god, since only those that do not apply to the Creator could serve faith in another god.

If you look at what follows as well, “Blessed are the eyes which see what you see; for I tell you that the prophets did not see what you see,” this too comes down from the preceding sense: that no one had known God as he ought, since not even the prophets had seen what was being seen under Christ. For if Christ were not mine, he would not have made mention of the prophets in this passage. For what wonder is it if they had not seen the things of a god unknown and revealed after so long an age, if they had not attained the display of things they had never foretold? But what would the happiness of those who then saw have been, except that those who could have seen the things of their own God, which they had even foretold, nevertheless had not seen them? For this will be the happiness of the former, that they saw what others had only foretold. In short, we shall show, and have already shown, that what was seen in Christ had been foretold, yet hidden even from the prophets themselves, so that it might be hidden also from the wise and prudent of the world.

In the gospel of truth a lawyer approached the Lord and said: “By doing what shall I obtain eternal life?” In the heretic's gospel only “life” is set down, without mention of “eternal,” so that the lawyer may seem to have asked about the life promised in the law by the Creator, a long life, and the Lord therefore to have answered him according to the law, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,” since he was asking about the life of the law. But the lawyer surely knew how the life of the law could be obtained, so that he would not have asked about it, since he himself taught its rules. But because the dead were already being raised by Christ, and, roused to the hope of eternal life by examples of a return to life, … lest the loftier hope should demand some further observance, therefore he asked how eternal life is to be attained. So the Lord, as one who was himself no other and was bringing in no other new commandment than the one that above all makes for all salvation and for both lives, sets before him the very head of the law, to love the Lord his God in every way. In fact, if the lawyer asked, and Christ answered, about the long life which is in the Creator's gift, not about the eternal life which is in the gift of Marcion's god, how will he obtain eternal life? Surely not in the same way as long life. For with the difference of rewards, a difference of works too must be believed. Then the Marcionites will not obtain eternal life by loving their god, as the lover of the Creator obtains long life. But how can it be that the one who promises eternal life is not to be loved all the more, if the one who promises long life is to be loved? So both lives will belong to the same God, since the discipline for gaining both lives is the same — what the Creator teaches, Christ too needs: that he be loved, in order to grant them. Here too that prescription intervenes, by which greater things ought more easily to be believed of the one with whom lesser things come first than of one for whom no lesser things have prepared any faith in the greater. Let it be their concern now whether our people added “eternal”: this is enough for me, that Christ, the one who invites to eternal and not to long life, when asked about long life, which he was abolishing, did not rather urge the man toward eternal life, which he was bringing in. What, I ask you, would the Creator's Christ have done, if one who was not the Creator's had built man up to love the Creator? I suppose he would have denied that the Creator is to be loved.

When in a certain place he had prayed to that higher Father — lifting quite shameless and reckless eyes to the Creator's heaven, from which he could have been crushed by such harsh and cruel hail and lightning, just as he could be nailed up by him (at) Jerusalem — one of his disciples approached him and said: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples,” (because, of course, he thought that another god had to be prayed to in another way. Whoever presumes this must first prove that another god was made known by Christ. For no one would have wanted to know how to pray before he had learned to whom he should pray. So if he had learned, prove it. If up to now you nowhere prove it, know that he asked for a form of prayer to the Creator, to whom John's disciples too were praying. But because John too had introduced some new order of prayer, this disciple not unreasonably presumed that the same should be asked of Christ, so that they too, by an institution of their own master, might pray not to another god but to God in another way. Accordingly, Christ would not have given the disciple a knowledge of prayer before a knowledge of God himself. So he too taught a prayer to the one whom the disciple had known up to then. In short, recognize which God the meaning of the prayer savors of. To whom shall I say “Father”? To one who did not make me at all, from whom I do not draw my origin, or to him who begot me by making and fashioning me? From whom shall I ask for the Holy Spirit? From one by whom not even the spirit of this world is granted, or from him by whom even angels are made spirits, and whose Spirit also in the beginning was borne upon the waters? Shall I wish for the coming of the kingdom of one whom I have never heard called the king of glory, or of him in whose hand are even the hearts of kings? Who will give me daily bread? One who does not even grow millet for me, or he who even from heaven supplied his people daily with the bread of angels? Who will forgive me my sins? One who does not retain them because he does not judge, or he who, if he does not forgive, will retain them in order to judge? Who will not allow us to be led into temptation? One whom the tempter might have no reason to fear, or he who from the beginning condemned the tempter angel in advance? Whoever makes supplication in this order to another god and not to the Creator does not pray to him but defames him. Likewise, from whom shall I ask, that I may receive? With whom shall I seek, that I may find? At whose door shall I knock, that it may be opened to me? Who has the means to give to one who asks, except him to whom all things belong, to whom I myself, who ask, belong? And what have I lost with that god, that I should seek it with him and find it? If wisdom and prudence, the Creator hid these; so it is with him that I shall seek. If salvation and life, these too are with the Creator. Nothing will be sought, in order to be found, anywhere but where it lay hidden, in order to appear. So too I shall knock nowhere else than where I was driven out from. In short, if receiving and finding and being admitted is the fruit of labor and perseverance for the one who has asked and sought and knocked, understand that these things are commanded and promised by the Creator. For that most good god, coming of his own accord to show kindness to a man not his own, would have imposed on him no labor and no perseverance. For he would no longer be most good if he did not give of his own accord to one who did (not) ask, and grant finding to one who did not seek, and open to one who did not knock. But the Creator could impose these things through Christ, so that, since man had offended his God by sinning, he might receive by the labor and perseverance of asking, find by that of seeking, and enter by that of knocking.

So too the parable set before this makes the one who asks for bread by night a friend, not a stranger, and has him knock at a friend's door, not an unknown man's. And a friend, even if he gives offense, is a man of the Creator's rather than of Marcion's god. So he knocks at the door of one on whom he had a claim, whose door he knew, whom he knew to have loaves, who was already lying in bed with the children whom he had willed to be born. Even the knocking late belongs to the Creator: the late hour is his whose is the world and the world's setting; but no one would have knocked late at the door of a new god, whose day was only just dawning. The door too is the Creator's, who formerly had shut it to the nations, the door that formerly was (not) knocked at. O what a God! He rises and gives, even if no longer as to a friend, yet not as to a stranger. (But as to a nuisance, he says. But a newly arrived god could not so soon have found anyone a nuisance.

Recognize, then, as Father the one whom you even call so, the Creator. He is the one who knows what his children ask. For to those who asked for bread he gave manna from heaven, and to those who longed for meat he sent quails, not a serpent for a fish nor a scorpion for an egg. And it will belong to him who has both to refrain from giving evil instead of good. Marcion's god, on the other hand, having no scorpion, could not say that he would not give what he did not have; it is the one who has a scorpion too, and does not give it, who can say this. So too the Holy Spirit will be given by him with whom there is also a spirit that is not holy.

When he had cast out a mute demon, so as to fulfill Isaiah in that kind of healing too, and was said to cast out demons by Beelzebul, he said: “If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out?” By these words what does he indicate, if not that he casts them out by the same power as their sons, namely by the power of the Creator? For if you think it should be taken thus: “If I by Beelzebul, your sons by whom?”, as though he were reproaching them for casting out by Beelzebul, the earlier sense will stand against you, that Satan cannot be divided against himself. So neither were they casting out by Beelzebul, but, as we have said, by the power of the Creator; and to make this understood he adds: “But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, has not the kingdom of God come near to you?” For in Pharaoh's presence those sorcerers who were brought in against Moses called the Creator's power the finger of God — “This is the finger of God” — because a finger signifies something small yet very strong. Showing this too, Christ, who recalls rather than obliterates ancient things, his own, of course, called the power of God the finger of God, to be understood as belonging to none other than him by whom it had been so named. So it was his kingdom too that had drawn near, whose power was called a finger.

Rightly, then, he attached to this the parable of that strong armed man whom another stronger than he overpowered, meaning the prince of demons, whom he had called Beelzebul and Satan above, overpowered by the finger of God, not the Creator subdued by another god. Besides, how would the Creator's kingdom still stand within its own bounds and laws and offices — the Creator whom, even with the world left intact, that stronger god of Marcion could in this way have seemed to overcome — if the Marcionites too did not die according to his law, crumbling into earth, and were not often taught even by a scorpion that the Creator has not been overcome?

A woman from the crowd cries out that blessed is the womb that carried him, and the breasts that nursed him; and the Lord says: “No, rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and do it.” Why not? Earlier too he had rejected his mother in the same way, as well as his brothers, while preferring those who hear and obey God: for his mother was not standing by him here either. So neither earlier had he denied that he was born, since, taking the point up again here, he likewise transferred the blessedness from the womb and breasts of his mother to the disciples; and he would not have transferred it from her if he had not had her.

I prefer to clear elsewhere the charges which the Marcionites bring against the Creator. For here it is enough if they are found in Christ too. See, he too is inconsistent, unstable, fickle, teaching one thing and doing another: he commands us to give to everyone who asks, and he himself does not give a sign to those who ask; for so long an age he hid his light from men, and yet he says a lamp is not to be hidden away, and insists that it must be set on a lampstand to give light to all; he forbids cursing in return, and much more surely cursing, and yet he heaps (woes) on the Pharisees and lawyers. Who (is) this Christ so like my God, if not his?

We have often established that he could in no way have been marked out as a destroyer of the law if he had proclaimed another god. That is why then too the Pharisee who had invited him to lunch was turning it over in his mind why one who went about with the God of the law had not first washed before reclining, according to the law. Jesus, however, even interpreted the law to him, saying that they cleaned the outside of the cup and the dish, but their inside was full of robbery and wickedness, to signify that the cleanness of vessels is to be understood before God as the cleanness of men; (and) since the Pharisee had been thinking to himself about a man, not about an unwashed cup, he says: “You wash the outside of the cup,” that is, the flesh, “but you have not cleansed your inside,” that is, the soul, adding: “Did not he who made the outside,” that is, the flesh, “make the inside also,” that is, the soul? By this saying he openly showed that the cleanness of the outer and the inner man belongs to the same God to whom both belong, who puts mercy before not only the washing of a man but even sacrifice. For he adds: “Give what you have as alms, and all things will be clean for you.” And even if another god could have commanded mercy, yet not before he was known. Moreover, it is clear here too that they were rebuked not about God but about the discipline of him who commanded them both the cleanness of vessels, figuratively, and works of mercy, plainly.

So too he reproves those who tithe their little herbs but pass over the calling and the love of God. The calling and love of what God, if not of him to whom they offered rue and mint as tithes according to the pattern of the law? For the whole reproach was this: that they cared for small things, surely toward the one to whom they did not render the greater, who says: “You shall love the Lord your God with all (your) heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, who called you out of Egypt.” Besides, the time would not have allowed Christ to demand so precocious, or rather so unripe, a love for a new and recent god, not to say one not yet made public.

When he also accuses those who seek the first places and the honor of greetings, he carries out the Creator's line, who calls such chiefs rulers of Sodom, who also forbids trusting in those set over us, and indeed pronounces the man most wretched who has hope in man. And if anyone aims at preeminence so as to glory in the services of others, the one who forbade such services by his ban on hoping and trusting in man also rebuked those who aim at preeminence.

He inveighs also against the lawyers themselves, because they burdened others with unbearable burdens which they themselves did not dare touch even with a finger; not censuring the burdens of the law as one who detested it. For how could he be its detester, who was just then accusing those who passed over the weightier things of the law — alms, and the calling and love of God — which are not even heavy, much less the tithes of rue and the cleaning of dishes? Besides, he would rather have thought them excusable if they could not carry what was unbearable. But what burdens does he censure? Those which they heaped up of their own, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men for their own advantage, joining house to house to take away what is their neighbor's, trampling the people, loving gifts, chasing rewards, plundering the judgments due to the poor, so that the widow might be their spoil and the orphan their prey. Of these the same Isaiah says: “Woe to those who are strong in Israel,” and again: “Those who make demands on you rule over you.” Who more than the lawyers? If these displeased Christ too, they displeased him as his own. For he would not have attacked at all the teachers of a law not his own.

But why do they hear (woe) also because they built tombs for the prophets killed by their fathers, when they were rather worthy of praise, since by that work of piety they were testifying that they did not consent to their fathers' deeds — unless he was a jealous God, such as the Marcionites accuse, exacting the sins of the fathers from the sons to the fourth generation?

And what key did the lawyers have but the interpretation of the law? To its understanding they neither went in themselves, not believing, of course — for “unless you believe, you will not understand” — nor let others in, since they taught rather the precepts and doctrines of men. Then is the one who rebuked those who neither entered themselves nor let others enter to be held a detractor of the law or its supporter? If a detractor, those who shut off the law should have pleased him; if a supporter, then he is no longer a rival of the law. But, they say, he was bringing all this in to blacken the Creator as cruel, since those who sinned against him would have (woe). And who would not rather fear to provoke a cruel God by falling away from him? So much the more, then, was he teaching that the one he presented as to be feared must be won over. So it befitted the Creator's Christ.

Rightly, then, he dislikes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who love God with their lips, that is, and not with their heart. “Beware,” he says to his disciples, “of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy,” not the preaching of the Creator. The Son hates those who are stubborn toward the Father; he does not want his own to be such toward him — not toward another — toward whom hypocrisy had also been committed, the example of which the disciples were to beware of. So (when) he forbids the Pharisees' example, he was forbidding it to be committed against the one against whom the Pharisees were committing it. So, since he had censured their hypocrisy, which surely concealed the secrets of the heart and overshadowed the hidden things of unbelief with superficial observances, and which, having the key of knowledge, neither entered itself nor let others enter, he therefore adds: “But nothing is covered that will not be laid open, and nothing hidden that will not be made known,” so that no one should think he was aiming at a revelation and recognition of a god formerly unknown and hidden; for he adds also that what they muttered within themselves or discussed among themselves — saying of him, that is, “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul” — would come out into the open and be on men's lips through the proclamation of the gospel.

Then, turning to the disciples, he says: “But I say to you, my friends: do not be terrified by those who can only kill you and after this have no further power over you” — but Isaiah will be on the side of these, foretelling: “See how the righteous man is taken away, and no one takes notice” — “but I will show you whom you should fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into Gehenna” — meaning the Creator, surely —; “so I tell you: fear him.” And in this passage it would be enough for me to say: he whom Christ commands to be feared he forbids to be offended, and he whom he forbids to be offended he commands to be won over; and the one who gives these commands belongs to him on whose behalf he secures fear, freedom from offense, and favor. But I have more to take from what follows: “For I say to you: everyone who confesses me before men, I will confess him before God.” Now those who confess Christ before men will have to be killed, surely suffering nothing further from men after being killed. These, then, will be the ones whom he forewarned above not to fear being merely killed; he put first that death was not to be feared, so that he might add that confession must be endured. “And everyone who has denied me before men will be denied before God,” surely by the one who would have confessed him had he confessed. For if he will confess the confessor, he is the one who will also deny the denier. Moreover, if the confessor is the one who has nothing to fear after being killed, the denier will be the one who has something to fear even after death. So since what is to be feared after death, namely the punishment of Gehenna, belongs to the Creator, the denier too belongs to the Creator. And if the denier, then the confessor too, who after being killed will suffer nothing from man, but would clearly suffer from God if he denied. And so Christ is the Creator's, since he shows that those who deny him must fear the Creator's Gehenna.

So after deterring them from denial there follows a warning that blasphemy must be dreaded: “Whoever speaks against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him.” If forgiving and retaining sin already savor of God as judge, then the Holy Spirit that must not be blasphemed will (also) be his who will not forgive the blasphemy, just as above the one who must not be denied was his who will kill even into Gehenna. And if Christ turns blasphemy away from the Creator, I do not know how he came as his adversary. Or if by these words too he blackens the Creator's severity, as one who will not forgive blasphemy and will kill even into Gehenna, it remains that the Spirit of that other god may be blasphemed and Christ denied with impunity, and that it makes no difference whether he is worshiped or despised; and that, as there is no punishment for contempt, so no reward is to be hoped for worship.

He forbids those brought before the authorities to think out their answer for the interrogation. “For the Holy Spirit,” he says, “will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” If there is a proof of this kind from the Creator, the precept will belong to him whose example went before it. The prophet Balaam in Numbers, summoned by King Balak to curse Israel, with whom Balak was going to battle, was at once filled with the Spirit, and pronounced not the curse for which he had come but the blessing which the Spirit suggested to him in that very hour, having declared beforehand to the king's messengers, and soon to the king himself, that he would pronounce what God had put into his mouth. These are the new teachings of the new Christ, which the servants of the Creator initiated long ago.

Here, to be sure, is a contrasting example of Moses and of Christ. Moses, when brothers were quarreling, intervenes of his own accord and rebukes the wrongdoer: “Why do you strike your neighbor?”, and is rejected by him: “Who appointed you master or judge over us?” Christ, on the other hand, when asked by someone to settle (the) division of an inheritance between him and his brother, refused his help, and that in so honest a cause. So then my Moses is better than your Christ, striving for peace between brothers and confronting injury. But of course he is the Christ of the most good god, who is no judge: “Who,” he says, “appointed me judge over you?” Could he find no other form of excuse, so as not to use the words with which a wicked man and an impious brother had thrown off the champion of honesty and piety? In short, he approved a bad saying by using it, and a bad deed by declining to make peace between brothers. Or was he indignant that Moses had been driven off with this saying, and therefore, in a like case of brothers disputing, wanted to shame them by recalling the same saying? Clearly, let it be so. For he himself had then been in Moses, the one who had heard such words, namely the Spirit of the Creator.

I think we have already sufficiently established elsewhere that the glory of riches is condemned by our God, who pulls the mighty down from their throne and lifts the poor from the dunghill. From him, then, will come the parable of the rich man who flattered himself on the yield of his fields, to whom God says: “Fool, this night they will demand your soul back; and whose will be what you have prepared?” So, in the end, King (Hezekiah), having boasted before the Persians of his treasures and the storehouses of his delights, heard hard words through Isaiah

Who would forbid us to take thought for the soul about food and for the body about clothing, except the one who provided these things for man beforehand, and who, since he supplies them from then on, rightly forbids anxiety about them as a rival to his own generosity; who also made the substance of the soul itself worth more than food, and shaped the material of the body itself to be worth more than a tunic; whose ravens too neither sow nor reap nor store up in barns and yet are fed by him; whose lilies and grass too neither weave nor spin and yet are clothed by him; whose Solomon too was most glorious and yet not more finely arrayed than any little flower? Besides, nothing is so abrupt as that one should provide and another should command us to be carefree about his provision, and he a disparager of him at that. In short, whether he does not want thought given to such trifles as a disparager of the Creator — trifles about which neither ravens nor lilies labor, since they are supplied unasked, of course, because they are cheap — will appear a little later. Meanwhile, why does he accuse them of little faith, that is, of what faith? Of the faith which they could not yet show in perfection to a God only just (re)vealed, since they were only now learning him, or of the faith which they owed the Creator on this very account, to believe that he supplies these things to the human race unasked, and not to take thought about them? For when he also adds, “For the nations of the world seek these things,” that is, by not believing in God, the founder and provider of all things, he was rebuking as of little faith toward the same God those whom he did not want to be like the gentiles, whom he was marking as unbelieving toward him. Moreover, when he adds, “But the Father knows that you need these things,” I shall first ask which Father Christ wants to be understood. If theirs, he points to the Creator and confirms him as good, since he knows what his children need; (if) his own, that other god, how does he know that food and clothing are necessary to man, when he supplied none of them? For if he had known, he would have supplied them. But if he knew what is necessary to man and still did not supply it, he failed to supply it either from malice or from weakness. And by declaring these things necessary to man, he surely confirmed them as good — for nothing evil is necessary — and he will no longer be a depreciator of the Creator's works and kindnesses, so that I have now settled what I put off above. Moreover, if another both provided and supplies what he knows is necessary to man, how does he himself promise these things? Or is he good at another's expense? “For seek,” he says, “the kingdom of God, and these things will be added to you,” surely by himself. But if by himself, what sort of god is he who will supply what belongs to another? If by the Creator, to whom they belong, who is he to promise another's things? If these things are to be added to the kingdom, to be restored in second place, the second place belongs to the one who also has the first; the food and clothing belong to the one to whom the kingdom also belongs. So the whole promise is the Creator's.

If the structure of parables and the matching of similitudes look to no one other than the one to whom they correspond in every respect, and we are servants — for we have God as Lord —, then we must gird our loins, that is, be free from the encumbrances of a trailing and entangled life, and likewise have lamps burning, that is, minds kindled by faith and shining with works of truth, and so wait for the Lord, that is, Christ. Returning from where? If from a wedding, he is the Creator's, whose weddings they are; if he is not the Creator's, not even Marcion himself would have gone to a wedding if invited, looking to his own god, the hater of weddings. So the parable fails in the person of the Lord if he were not one to whom weddings are fitting.

In the following parable too, he errs badly who assigns to the person of the Creator that thief whose hour, if the master of the house knew it, he would not let his house be broken into. For how can the Creator, Lord of the whole man, seem a thief? No one steals or breaks into what is his own; rather it is he who comes down upon what is another's and estranges man from his Lord. Moreover, since he shows us that the thief is the devil, whose hour, had man known it even in the beginning, he would never have been broken into by him, he therefore commands us to be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour we do not expect: not as though he himself were the thief, but as the judge, of course, of those who have not prepared themselves and have not guarded against the thief. So if he himself is the Son of Man, I hold him as judge, and in the judge I defend the Creator; but if in this place, under the name of the Son of Man, he shows the Creator's Christ so as to depict him as the thief whose coming we do not know, you have the rule laid down above that no one is a thief of his own property; and this too remains safe, that insofar as he presents the Creator as one to be feared, so far he is doing the Creator's business and belongs to him. So when Peter asked whether he was speaking the parable to them or to all, he sets forth, (that) is, for them and for all who would preside over the churches, a similitude of stewards: the one among them who has treated his fellow servants well in his lord's absence will, when the lord returns, be set over all his goods; but the one who has acted otherwise, when the lord returns on a day he did not expect, at an hour he did not know — that Son of Man, namely, the Creator's Christ, not a thief but a judge — will be cut off, and his portion will be put with the unbelievers. Accordingly, either here too he sets forth the Lord as judge, (as) he teaches there, or, if it is the most good god, he now affirms that he too is a judge, however little the heretic may like it. For they try to soften this sense when it is claimed for their god, as though it were a matter of peace and gentleness merely to cut off and to put a man's portion with the unbelievers, as if he had simply not been called, and were only returned to his own condition. As if this very thing were not done by judgment! What folly! What will be the outcome of those cut off? Is it not the loss of salvation? For they will be cut off from those who will attain salvation. And what is the state of the unbelievers? Is it not damnation? Or if those cut off and the unbelievers will suffer nothing, then equally, on the other side, those kept and the believers will gain nothing. But if those kept and the believers will gain salvation, those cut off and the unbelievers must on the other side lose it. This will be judgment, and whoever threatens it is the Creator's.

Whom else am I to understand as beating his servants with few or many blows, and requiring of them according to what he entrusted to them, than God who repays? Whom does he teach me to obey, if not one who rewards?

Your Christ proclaims: “I have come to cast fire on the earth,” he, the most good, lord of no Gehenna, who a little before had restrained his disciples from calling down fire on a most inhospitable village! When this other burned up Sodom and Gomorrah with a storm of fire; when it was sung (of him): “Fire will go before him and burn up his enemies”; when he threatened through Hosea, “I will send fire on the cities of Judah,” or through Isaiah, “Fire has blazed out from my indignation”: he must be lying, if he is not the one who sent forth his voice also from the burning bush. Consider what fire you insist is to be understood: even if it is a figure, by the very fact that he takes proofs for his meaning from my element, the one who uses what is mine is mine. The likeness of fire will belong to him to whom the reality of fire belongs. He himself will better interpret the nature of this fire when he adds: “Do you think I have come to send peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but separation.” “A sword,” indeed, is what is written, but Marcion emends it. As if separation too were not the work of a sword! So he who denied peace intends also a fire of overthrow. As the battle, so the burning; as the sword, so the flame; neither befits (your) lord. In short: “Father,” he says, “will be divided against son and son against father, and mother against daughter and daughter against mother, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law and mother-in-law against daughter-in-law.” If the prophet's trumpet sounded this war among relatives in these very words, I fear that Micah was preaching for Marcion's Christ.

And therefore he pronounced them hypocrites, who could test the face of the sky and of the earth, but did not discern that time in which, of course, he ought to have been recognized, as he fulfilled everything that had been foretold of him and taught nothing different. Besides, who could have known the times of one who had nothing by which to prove them? He rightly reproaches them also for not judging what is right of themselves. Long ago he commanded this through Ezekiel: “Judge just and peaceable judgment”; through Jeremiah: “Do judgment and righteousness”; through Isaiah: “Judge for the orphan and justify the widow,” charging the vineyard of Sorek too that it had produced not judgment but an outcry. So he who had taught them to do it by precept was requiring them to do it of their own judgment as well. He who had sown the precept was also pressing for its overflow. And how absurd, that one should command us to judge justly who was destroying God the just judge! For they also discuss, by way of disparagement, the judge who sends a man into prison and does not bring him out until even the last farthing has been paid, as representing the Creator. To this I must respond with the same step. For as often as the Creator's severity is thrown up against us, so often does Christ belong to the one to whom he compels obedience through fear.

Again, how did he settle the question about the healing done on the sabbath? “Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ass or his ox from the manger and lead it to water?” So by acting according to the terms of the law he confirmed the law, not dissolved it, the law which commands that no work be done except what is to be done for every living soul — how much more a human one?

I demand everywhere that the parables fit. “The kingdom of God,” he says, “is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his garden.” Who is to be understood in the person of the man? Surely Christ, who, even if he is Marcion's, has been called the Son of Man; who received from the Father the seed of the kingdom, that is, the word of the gospel, and sowed it in the garden, surely in this world. Say now that it is in man; but since he said “in (his) garden,” and neither the world nor man is his but the Creator's, then he who sowed in his own ground is shown to be the Creator's. Or if, to escape this snare, they transfer the person of the man from Christ to the man who receives the seed of the kingdom and sows it in the garden of his heart, not even this material will fit anyone but the Creator.

As for the following similitude, I am really afraid that it may perhaps portend the kingdom of another god. For he compared it to leaven, not to unleavened bread, which is more familiar to the Creator. This is just the sort of conjecture that suits those who go begging for arguments. So I too will drive off vanity with vanity, saying that leavening too fits the Creator's kingdom, because after it comes the oven, or the furnace of Gehenna. For what sort of thing is it that the kingdom of the gentlest god should be one which even the heat of judgment follows with tearful harshness?

How often does he still show himself a judge, and in the judge the Creator! How often, surely, does he reject, and condemn by rejecting! As here too: “When the master of the house has risen” — to do what? what but what Isaiah said: “When he has risen to shatter the earth” — “and has shut the door” — surely to shut out the wicked, to whom, when they knock, he will answer, “I do not know where you are from,” and again, when they recount that they ate and drank in his presence and he taught in their streets: “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity” — “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” — where? outside, of course, where those shut out will be once the door is shut; so the punishment will come from the one by whom the shutting out into punishment is done — “when they see the righteous entering into the kingdom of God, but themselves held outside.” Held by whom? If by the Creator, who then will be inside receiving the righteous into the kingdom? The good god? Then what is the Creator doing there, holding outside in punishment those whom his adversary has shut out, when he would rather receive them himself, if anything, to spite his adversary? But that other too, when he is about to shut out the wicked, must either know that the Creator will hold them in punishment, or not know it. So either they will be held against his will, and he is less than the one who holds them, yielding to him unwillingly; or, if he wishes it to happen so, he himself has judged that it must be done so. And then he who is the author of the Creator's disgrace will be no better than the Creator. If there is no reason in believing that one punishes and another sets free, then both the judgment and the kingdom will belong to one; and since both belong to one, the one who judges is the Creator.

What sort of people does he command to be invited to lunch or dinner? The sort he had pointed out through Isaiah: “Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the beggars and those who have no roof into your house,” those, that is, who cannot repay this kindness. If Christ forbids seeking such repayment, promising it at the resurrection, the pattern is the Creator's, who is displeased with those who love gifts and chase rewards.

Weigh also which side the parable of the host fits better. “A certain man made a dinner and invited many.” Surely the preparing of the dinner figures the fullness of eternal life. I say first that strangers, bound by no tie of kinship, are not usually invited to dinner; certainly members of the household and relatives are invited more readily. So it is the Creator who invited, to whom the invited belonged, both through Adam, as men, and (through) the fathers, as Jews; not the one to whom they belonged neither by nature nor by privilege. Next, if the one who sends to the guests is the one who prepared the dinner, in this way too the dinner is the Creator's, who sent to remind the guests, already invited beforehand through the fathers, and to be reminded through the prophets; not one who sent no one to remind them and did nothing beforehand to invite them, but came down himself suddenly, inviting as soon as he became known, pressing people into the banquet as soon as he invited them, making the hour of dining and the invitation to dinner one and the same. The invited make excuses. If invited by another god, they did so rightly, because they were invited suddenly; if not rightly, then neither were they invited suddenly; but if they were not invited suddenly, then it was by the Creator, by whom they had been invited long ago, and whose invitation they had in fact declined back then, first saying to Aaron, “Make us gods to go before us,” and thereafter hearing with the ear and not hearing, namely the invitation of God, who says most pertinently to this parable through Jeremiah: “Hear my voice, and I will be your God and you will be my people, and you will walk in all my ways, whatever I command you” — see, the invitation of God — “and they did not hear,” he says, “and did not incline their ear” — see, the refusal of the people — “but they went off in the things that they desired in their evil heart”: “I have bought a field and I have purchased oxen and I have married a wife.” And he adds further: “And I sent to you all my servants the prophets” — this will be the Holy Spirit, who reminds the guests — “by day and before dawn, and my people did not hear and did not attend with their ears, and they hardened their neck.” When this was reported to the master of the house, he was then moved — good that he was moved, for Marcion denies that his god is moved; so in this too he is mine — and he orders a replacement to be gathered from the streets and lanes of the city. Let us see whether it is in the sense in which he says again through Jeremiah: “Have I become a wilderness to the house of Israel, or a land left untilled?” — that is: have I no one to choose, or nowhere to choose from? — “because my people said: We will not come to you.” So he sent to invite others still from the same city. Then, since there was room to spare, he commanded people to be gathered even from the roads and hedges, that is, us now, from the foreign nations, with that jealousy, namely, of which he speaks in Deuteronomy: “I will turn my face away from them and show what will be theirs at the last” — that is, that others will possess their place — “because it is a perverse generation, sons in whom there is no faith. They have made me jealous with what is no god and provoked me to anger with their idols; and I will make them jealous with what is no nation, with a foolish (nation) I will provoke them to anger” — with us, namely, whose hope the Jews groan over, which the Lord says they will not taste, Zion being left like a watchtower in a vineyard and a hut in a cucumber field, after it had refused even the last invitation, the one in Christ. What of this order, reviewed according to the Creator's arrangements and predictions, can apply to one who has neither an order nor an arrangement to fit the parable, who did his whole work at once? Or what will be his first invitation, and what the reminder in the second act? First some must make excuses, and afterward others must come together. But now he comes inviting both groups at the same time, from the city and from the hedges, against the mirror of the parable. Nor can he judge as disdainful those whom he never invited before, whom he is only now approaching. Or if he judges them as those who will despise the invitation in the future, then he also foretells as future their replacement by the gentiles. Clearly he is yet to come a second time; he is to come, however, I suppose, not to invite guests still, but by then to seat them at table. Meanwhile, you who interpret the invitation to this dinner as a heavenly banquet of spiritual fullness and delight, remember that the Creator's earthly promises of wine and oil and grain, and of the city itself, are likewise figures of spiritual things.

Who looks for the lost sheep and the lost coin? Is it not the one who lost it? And who lost it? Is it not the one who had it? And who had it? Is it not the one to whom it belonged? If, then, man is the property of no one but the Creator, the one who had him is the one to whom he belonged; the one who lost him is the one who had him; the one who sought him is the one who lost him; the one who found him is the one who sought him; the one who rejoiced is the one who found him. So the point of both parables is empty with regard to one to whom neither the sheep nor the coin, that is, man, belongs. For he did not lose, because he did not have; nor seek, because he did not lose; nor find, because he did not seek; nor rejoice, because he did not find. And so to rejoice over a sinner's repentance, that is, over the recovery of the lost, belongs to him who declared long ago that he prefers the repentance of a sinner to his death.

Which two masters he says cannot both be served, since one must necessarily be offended and the other defended, he himself declares, setting forth God and mammon. So whom he wants to be understood by mammon, if you have no interpreter, you can learn from him. For when he advises us to secure for ourselves, from worldly goods, the support of friendships, after the example of that servant who, removed from his stewardship, relieved his master's debtors by reducing their bonds as a help for himself, he says: “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by the mammon of unrighteousness,” that is, by money, as that servant also did. For we all know money to be the author of unrighteousness and the ruler of the whole world. Seeing the greed of the Pharisees enslaved to it, he attached this sentence: “You cannot serve God and mammon.” In fact the money-loving Pharisees mocked him, because they understood, of course, that mammon was said of money; so let no one think that by mammon the Creator is to be understood, and that Christ called them back from the service of the Creator. What then? Rather learn from this that one God was shown by Christ. For he named two masters, God and mammon, the Creator and money: so, “You cannot serve God” — surely the one whom they seemed to serve — “and mammon,” to whom they were more devoted. But if he were presenting himself as another, he would have pointed out not two masters but three — for the Creator too is a master, since he is God, and surely more a master than mammon, and more to be observed by man, inasmuch as he is more a master —; for what sort of thing is it that one who had called mammon a master and had joined it with the true master should have kept silent about the master himself, that is, God the Creator? Or by keeping silent about him did he concede that he must be served, since he denied only that both he himself and mammon could be served? So when he sets down one God — he who would have named the Creator too if he himself were another — he named as the Creator the one whom he set down without any other. And so that saying too will shine out, in what sense it was said: “(If) you have not been faithful in unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you what is true?” — in unrighteous money, of course, not in the Creator, whom even Marcion makes just; and: “If you have not been found faithful in what is another's, who will give you what is mine?” For what is unrighteous ought to be foreign to the servants of God. But how was the Creator foreign to the Pharisees, being the proper God of the Jewish nation? If, then, these things do not apply to the Creator but to mammon, “who will entrust to you what is truer?” and “who will give you what is mine?” He cannot have spoken as though of another's gift, that of another god. For he would seem to have spoken so only if, by marking them as unfaithful toward the Creator and not toward mammon, he had by mentioning the Creator distinguished himself as another god, who would not entrust his truth to those unfaithful to the Creator; … since a thing can seem to belong to another only when it is not set forth for the purpose of being separated from the matter at hand.

And if the Pharisees too, justifying themselves before men, placed their hope of reward in man, he rebuked them in the same sense as the prophet Jeremiah: “Wretched is the man who has hope in man.” If he adds too, “But God knows your hearts,” he was recalling the power of that God (who) had declared himself a lamp searching the reins and hearts. If he touches on pride — “What is exalted among men is abhorrent to God” — he sets Isaiah before our eyes: “For the day of the Lord of hosts is upon everyone insolent and proud, upon everyone lofty and exalted, and they shall be brought low.”

I can now gather why Marcion's god was in hiding for so long an age. He was waiting, I suppose, until he had learned all these things from the Creator. So he learned up to John's time, and then came forward to announce the kingdom of God, saying: “The law and the prophets were until John; since then the kingdom of God is proclaimed.” As if we too did not recognize John as a kind of boundary set between the old and the new, at which Judaism would cease and from which Christianity would begin; yet not so that the stilling of the law and the prophets and the beginning of the gospel, in which is the kingdom of God, was brought about by another power. For if we have proved that the passing away of the old and the succession of the new were foretold by the Creator; if John too is shown to be the forerunner and preparer of the ways of the Lord, who would bring in the gospel and proclaim the kingdom of God; and if from the very fact that John came, the one who followed John as his forerunner will be the Christ; and if the old ceased and the new began with John standing between them, it will be no wonder that this comes from the Creator's arrangement, so that it may be proved from anywhere at all … more than from the setting of the law and the prophets in John and the rising of the kingdom of God from then on. Let heaven and earth pass away, then, sooner — as the law and the prophets did — than one tittle of the Lord's words: “For the word of our God,” says Isaiah, “abides forever.” For since in Isaiah even then Christ, that is, the Word and Spirit of the Creator, had foretold that John — “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord” — would come for this purpose, that the order of the law and prophets should cease from then on, by fulfillment, not by destruction, and the kingdom of God be proclaimed by Christ, he therefore added that the elements would pass away more easily than his words, confirming this too, that what he had said about John had not passed away.

(But Christ forbids divorce, saying: “Whoever puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery, (and) whoever marries a woman put away by her husband is likewise an adulterer” — so as to forbid divorce in this way too, he makes the marriage of a repudiated woman unlawful — whereas Moses permits repudiation in Deuteronomy: “If someone takes a wife and lives with her, and it happens that she does not find favor with him because something shameful has been found in her, he shall write a bill of repudiation and put it in her hand and send her away from his house.” Do you see the difference between the law and the gospel, between Moses and Christ? Of course you do. For you have not accepted that other gospel too, of the same truth and the same Christ, in which, while forbidding divorce, he settled the particular question about it: “Moses, because of the hardness of your heart, commanded a bill of repudiation to be given; but from the beginning it was not so”; because, of course, he who had made male and female had said, “The two shall be in one flesh; therefore what God has joined, let man (not) separate.” For by this answer he both protected the ordinance of Moses as his own and set right the institution of the Creator, as the Creator's Christ. But since you are to be refuted from what you have accepted, I will meet you as if my Christ were (yours): did not he too, while forbidding divorce, and yet bearing the likeness of him who joined male and female, excuse rather than destroy the ordinance of Moses? But see, let this Christ of yours be one who teaches contrary to Moses and the Creator, on these terms: that if I do not show him to be contrary, he is mine. For I say that he made the prohibition of divorce conditional here: if someone puts away his wife in order to marry another. “Whoever puts away his wife,” he says, “and marries another has committed adultery; and whoever marries a woman put away by her husband is likewise an adulterer”: a woman put away, of course, for the same reason for which it is not lawful to put her away, namely so that another wife may be taken; for whoever marries a woman unlawfully put away, as though she had not been put away, is an adulterer. For a marriage that has not been properly dissolved remains; and to marry while a marriage remains is adultery. So if he forbade putting away a wife conditionally, he did not forbid it absolutely; and what he did not forbid absolutely he permitted in other cases, where the reason for which he forbade it is absent; and so he teaches nothing contrary to Moses, whose precept he preserves in a certain case — I do not yet say confirms. Or if you deny altogether that divorce is permitted by Christ, how is it that you dissolve marriages, neither joining male and female yourself nor admitting those joined elsewhere to the sacrament of baptism and of the Eucharist unless they have sworn together against the fruit of marriage, as against the Creator himself? Surely, what will a husband do among you if his wife has committed adultery? Will he keep her? But you (know) that not even your apostle allows the members of Christ to be joined to a prostitute. So the justice of divorce has Christ too as its defender. Here at once Moses is confirmed by him, since Moses allows repudiation on the same ground as Christ does: “if something shameful has been found in the woman.” For in the gospel of Matthew too he says: “Whoever puts away his wife except for the cause of adultery makes her commit adultery.” And so he too is judged an adulterer who marries a woman put away by her husband. But except on the ground of adultery, not even the Creator separates what he himself, of course, has joined, since the same Moses elsewhere lays down that one who has made a marriage by violating a woman may never put away his wife. And if a marriage compelled by violence will stand, how much more one entered willingly by agreement? As by the authority of prophecy: “You shall not put away the wife of your youth.” So you have Christ freely following everywhere in the footsteps of the Creator, both in permitting repudiation and in forbidding it; you have him also, whichever way you try to hide, as the guardian of marriage, which he wants neither to be broken apart, forbidding repudiation, nor to be kept with a stain on it, permitting divorce in that case. Blush, you who do not join those whom even your Christ has joined; blush also, you who separate them without the ground on which even your Christ was willing for them to be separated.

I must now show also from what the Lord drew this saying and at what he aimed it. For so it will be more fully established that he did not aim at destroying Moses by suddenly interposing a statement on repudiation, since it was not interposed suddenly, but has its root in the same mention of John. For John, rebuking Herod because, against the law, he had married the wife of his dead brother, who had a daughter by her — the law not permitting this, and indeed commanding it only when a brother has died childless, so that seed might be raised up for him by his own brother and from his own rib — had been cast into prison by the same Herod, and was afterwards killed. So, having mentioned John, the Lord, stirred surely by his death, hurled figures of unlawful marriages and of adultery at Herod, pronouncing an adulterer even one who marries a woman put away by her husband, so as to weigh down all the more the impiety of Herod, who had married a woman put away from her husband no less by repudiation than by death — and that when his brother had a daughter by her, and on that ground too unlawfully — at the prompting of lust, not of the law, and for that reason had also killed the prophet who upheld the law.

This discussion will help me also with the following argument, about the rich man in pain among the dead and the poor man at rest in Abraham's bosom. For that too, as regards the surface of the Scripture, is introduced suddenly; but as regards the intent of its meaning, it too coheres with the mention of John mistreated and of Herod wrongly married, depicting the end of each, Herod's torments and John's refreshment, so that Herod might now hear: “They have Moses and the prophets there; let them hear them.” But Marcion forces it another way: he assigns both of the Creator's rewards, whether of torment or of refreshment, to the underworld, as laid up for those who have obeyed the law and the prophets, but he defines the bosom and harbor of Christ and his god as heavenly. We will answer this too, since Scripture itself refutes his eyes, the Scripture which set Abraham's bosom for the poor man apart from the underworld. For the underworld, I think, is one thing, and Abraham's bosom another. For it says also that a great gulf lies between those regions and prevents passage either way. Nor would the rich man have lifted up his eyes, and that from afar, except toward higher places, and to the distance of the height, across that immense distance between height and depth. From this it is clear to every wise man who has ever heard of the Elysian fields that there is some determined place, called Abraham's bosom, for receiving the souls of his children, even from the nations — his, that is, as the father of many nations — who are to be counted in Abraham's line by the same faith with which Abraham too believed God, under no yoke of the law and in no sign of circumcision. That region, then, Abraham's bosom, I say, though not heavenly, yet higher than the underworld, provides refreshment meanwhile to the souls of the righteous, until the consummation of things completes the resurrection of all with the fullness of reward. Then will appear the heavenly promise — which Marcion claims for his (god), as though it had not been proclaimed by the Creator — to which Christ builds his ascent into heaven, according to Hosea, surely for his own, where there is also the everlasting place of which Isaiah says: “Who will announce to you the everlasting place?” Who but Christ, walking in righteousness, speaking the right way, hating unrighteousness and iniquity? And if an everlasting place is promised and an ascent into heaven is built by the Creator, who also promises that the seed of Abraham will be like the stars of heaven, surely because of the heavenly promise, why, with that promise kept intact, should it not be admissible that Abraham's bosom is the name of some temporary receptacle of faithful souls, in which an image of the future is even now sketched and a certain bright foreview of both judgments is seen? It warns you heretics too, while you are in this life, … Moses and the prophets, who preach one God the Creator and preach his one Christ, and that both judgments, of punishment and of eternal salvation, rest with the one God, who kills and makes alive. No, he says, the admonition of our God from heaven commanded that not Moses and the prophets but Christ be heard: “Hear him.” Rightly. For by then the apostles had already heard Moses and the prophets enough, since they had followed Christ by believing Moses and the prophets. For Peter would not have been granted to say, “You are the Christ,” before he had heard and believed Moses and the prophets, by whom alone Christ had until then been announced. This faith of theirs, then, had earned confirmation even by a heavenly voice, commanding that he be heard whom they had recognized as preaching peace, preaching good things, announcing the everlasting place, building for them his ascent into heaven. But in the underworld it was said of those — “They have Moses and the prophets there; let them hear them” — who did not believe at all, or did not quite believe, that after death punishments had been announced by Moses and the prophets for the pride of riches and the glory of luxuries, and decreed by that God who puts down the mighty from their thrones and raises the needy from the dunghills. So since the difference between the two pronouncements befits the Creator, it is not a distinction between deities that must be established, but a distinction between the matters themselves.

Turning to the disciples in the same place, (he pronounces woe) on the author of stumbling blocks: it would have been better for him if he had not been born, or if he had been thrown into the deep with a millstone tied round his neck, than that he should cause one of those little ones, surely his disciples, to stumble. Consider what punishment he threatens. For no other will avenge the stumbling of his disciples. Recognize, then, both a judge, and one who speaks about care for his own with the same affection as the Creator long ago: “Whoever touches you is as one who touches the pupil of my eye.” The same sense belongs to the same one. He commands a sinning brother to be rebuked; whoever does not do this has surely sinned, either wishing out of hatred that his brother should persist in sin, or sparing him out of partiality. You have Leviticus: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely reprove your neighbor” — and surely your brother — “and you shall not incur sin because of him.” And no wonder he teaches this, who forbids you to disregard even your brother's cattle, if you find them straying on the road, rather than lead them back to your brother, much less to neglect bringing back your brother himself to himself. He also commands you to forgive a brother who sins against you, even seven times. Too little, plainly. For there is more with the Creator, who set no limit, declaring without end: “Do not remember your brother's malice,” and commands you to grant forgiveness not only to one who asks it but even to one who does not. For he wants you not merely to pardon the offense but to forget it.

How much interpretation the law of the lepers requires, regarding the kinds of that disease and the inspection by the high priest, is for us to know; for Marcion, it is to set against it the fussiness of the law, so as here too to affirm that Christ is its rival, anticipating the solemn rites of the law even in the healing of the ten lepers, whom he cleansed on the way, merely commanding them to go and show themselves to the priests, now without touch and without a word, by silent power and his will alone. As if, once Christ had been announced as the healer of sicknesses and diseases and proved by the results, there were any need to reconsider the manner of the cures, or to summon the Creator in Christ to account under the law, if he himself accomplished something otherwise than he laid down in the law; since surely the Lord works in one way by himself or through the Son, and in another (through) the prophets his servants, especially in proofs of might and power, which, as clearer and stronger, being his own, may rightly differ from those done by deputies. But things of this kind have already been said elsewhere, in the previous book. Now, even though he had said earlier that there were many lepers in Israel in the days of the prophet Elisha and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian, the number surely will not make for a difference of gods, to the destruction of the Creator, who healed one, and the preference of him who cleansed ten. For who will doubt that more could have been healed by him who had healed one than ten by the other, who had never before healed even one? But by this very saying he strikes at the distrust or the pride of Israel: that though there were many lepers there and a prophet was not lacking, even when a proof had been given, no one ran to God working in the prophet. So, since he himself was the authentic high priest of God the Father, he inspected them according to the hidden meaning of the law, which signifies that Christ is the true examiner and remover of human stains. But he also commanded what was plain in the law: “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” Why, if he was going to cleanse them first? Or was it as a mocker of the law, so that, having healed them on the way, he might show that the law, along with the priests themselves, is nothing? Well, let him see to it, to whom Christ seems so given to fancies. No, worthier interpretations and ones more in keeping with faith should be given: they were healed because, having been commanded to go to the priests according to the law, they had obeyed. For it is not credible that observers of the law earned healing from a destroyer of the law. But why did he give no such command to the earlier leper? Because neither did Elisha to Naaman the Syrian; and yet not for that reason was Elisha not the Creator's. I have answered enough; but the one who believes understands something deeper as well. Learn, then, the reasons too. The event took place in the regions of Samaria, and one of the lepers was also from there. Now Samaria had revolted from Israel, holding to that schism of the nine tribes, torn away through the prophet Ahijah, which Jeroboam had settled at Samaria. And besides, the Samaritans were always pleased with themselves over the mountains and wells of the fathers, as in John's gospel that Samaritan woman, talking with the Lord at the well: “Are you greater?” and so on; and again: “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say that one must worship at Jerusalem.” So he who had also said through Isaiah, “Woe to those who trust in the mountain of Samaria,” now himself deigning to restore it, deliberately commands them to show themselves to the priests — who surely were nowhere but where the temple was — subjecting the Samaritan to the Jew, since salvation is from the Jews, whether for Israelites or Samaritans, for the whole promise was to the tribe of Judah — so that they might know that at Jerusalem were the priests and the temple and the mother of religion and the fountain, not a well, of salvation. And so, when he saw that they had acknowledged that the law was to be fulfilled at Jerusalem, he healed them, since they were now to be justified by faith without the order of the law. That is why, marveling at that one Samaritan out of the ten, who was set free and mindful of divine grace, he does not command him to offer a gift according to the law, because he had already offered enough by giving glory to God, the Lord wishing this too to interpret the law. And yet to what God did the Samaritan give thanks, when not even an Israelite had until then learned of another god? To what other than the one to whom all those formerly healed by Christ gave thanks? And so he heard, “Your faith has saved you,” because he had understood that he ought to make the true offering to almighty God, namely thanksgiving, at his true temple and before his true high priest, Christ.

But neither can the Pharisees seem to have asked the Lord when the kingdom of another god would come, so long as no other god had been made known by Christ, nor can he seem to have answered about the kingdom of any other than the one about whose kingdom he was asked. “The kingdom of God,” he says, “does not come with observation, nor do they say, ‘See, here! See, there!’; for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” Who will not interpret “is within you” thus: that is, in your hand, in your power, if you hear and do God's commandment? And if the kingdom of God lies in the commandment, then set Moses against it, after the manner of our own antitheses, and the sense is one. “The commandment,” he says, “is not high nor far from you. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up into heaven and bring it down to us, and having heard it we will do it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross over and fetch it for us, and having heard it we will do it?’ The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart and in your hands, to do it.” This will be: “Not here nor there; for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” And lest heretical boldness argue that the Lord answered them not about the Creator's kingdom, about which he was asked, but about his own, what follows stands in the way. For by saying that the Son of Man must first suffer many things and be rejected before his coming, in which the kingdom too will be revealed in substance, he showed that the kingdom about which he had answered was his own, since it awaited his sufferings and rejection. And since he was to be rejected and afterwards acknowledged and taken up and exalted, he took even the word “rejected” from the place where, in the riddle of the stone, both his manifestations were sung in David, the first to be refused, the second to be honored: “The stone,” he says, “which the builders rejected, this has become the head of the corner; this was done by the Lord.” For it would be empty to believe that God prophesied about the dishonor or glory of some piece of flint, and did not portend him in the figure of a stone too, whom he had portended also in the figure of a rock and of a mountain.

But if he is speaking of his own coming, why does a mild and gentle god compare it to the dark and dreadful days of Noah and Lot? Why does he warn us to remember Lot's wife, who did not despise the Creator's command with impunity, if he will not come with judgment to avenge his own commands? Even if he does avenge like the Creator, if he judges, he ought not to have formed me by the proofs of the one he is destroying, lest it seem to be the Creator who forms me. But if here too he is not speaking of his own coming but of that of the Jews' Christ, let us wait still for him to preach something about his own, believing meanwhile that he is the Creator's Christ, since he preaches him in every place.

For, when he commands perseverance and urgency in prayer, he sets forth the parable of the judge who was compelled to hear the widow by the urgency and perseverance of her appeals. So he shows that it is God the judge who must be prayed to, not himself, if he himself is not the judge. But he (also) added that God would avenge his elect. If, then, the one who is judge will also be the avenger, he has proved the Creator to be the better god, since he showed him to be the avenger of his elect who cry to him day and night. And yet, when he brings in the Creator's temple and describes two men praying with different minds, the Pharisee in pride, the publican in humility, and says that the one went down rejected and the other justified, surely, by teaching with what discipline one must pray, he established here too that the one to be prayed to is he from whom they would receive this discipline of prayer, whether it rejects pride or justifies humility. I find with Christ no temple, no worshipers, no judgment of another god, but only of the Creator: him he commands us to worship in humility, as the one who lifts up the humble, not in pride, as the one who destroys the proud. What other does he show me to be worshiped? With what discipline? With what hope? None, I think. For the prayer he taught, too, we have proved fits the Creator. It is another matter if, being the most good god and good unasked, he does not even want to be worshiped.

“But who is good but one, God?” he says. Not as though he had shown one of two gods to be the good one, but that (one) God alone is good, who is thus alone good because he alone is God. And surely he is good who rains on the just and the unjust and makes his sun rise on the good and the evil, sustaining and feeding and helping even the Marcionites. In short, when he was asked by a certain man, “Good teacher, by doing what shall I possess eternal life?”, he asked whether he knew, that is, did, the Creator's commandments, so as to testify that eternal life is gained by the Creator's commandments; and when the man affirmed that he had kept all the chief ones from his youth, he said: “One thing you lack: sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Come now, Marcion, and all you heretics, his fellow wretches and fellow haters, what will you dare to say? Did Christ cancel the earlier commandments — not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to bear false witness, to love father and mother — or did he both keep them and add what was lacking — although this commandment too, of generosity to the needy, is spread everywhere through the law and the prophets — so that that most glorious keeper of the commandments might be exposed as one who would hold his money much dearer? Let this saying of the gospel, then, stand safe here too: “I have not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfill them.” At the same time he freed the other points from doubt, by making it plain that the name of God and of (the good one), and eternal life, and treasure in heaven, and he himself, all belong to one God, whose commandments he both kept and increased by supplementing them. He is to be recognized in this place also according to Micah, who says: “Has a man told you what is good? Or what does the Lord require of you but to do judgment, to love mercy, and to be ready to follow the Lord your God?” For Christ is the man telling what is good: the knowledge of the law — “You know the commandments,” he says; to do judgment — “Sell what you have,” he says; to love mercy — “And give to the needy,” he says; to be ready to go with the Lord — “And come,” he says, “follow me.”

The Jewish nation was from the beginning so distinctly arranged by tribes and peoples and families and houses that no one could easily be unknown as to his descent, not least because of the recent censuses of Augustus, which were then perhaps still on record. But Marcion's Jesus — even (if) there was no doubt of the birth of one who appeared to be a man — surely, not having been born, could have had no public record of his family, but was to be counted as one of those who were regarded, in whatever way, as unknown. When, then, the blind man heard that he was passing by, why did he cry out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me,” if not because he was not without reason reckoned the son of David, (that) is, of David's family, through his mother and brothers, who had once been announced to him, surely by people who knew them? (But those who went ahead rebuked the blind man, to make him be quiet. Rightly, since he was shouting, not because he was lying about the son of David. Or show that those who rebuked him knew that Jesus was not the son of David, so that they may be believed to have imposed silence on the blind man for that reason. But even if you showed it, you would more easily presume that they were ignorant than that the Lord could have allowed a false proclamation about himself. But the Lord is patient. Yet he does not confirm error. Nay more, as the one who exposes the Creator, would he not first have cleared away this blindness of that man, so that he would no longer think Jesus the son of David? But in fact, so that you should not defame his patience nor fasten on him any motive for dissembling, he most plainly confirmed the blind man's proclamation, both by the very reward of healing and by the testimony to his faith: “Your faith,” he says, “has saved you.” What do you want the blind man to have believed? That Jesus had come down from another god to expose the Creator, to destroy the law and the prophets? That he was not the one who was destined to come from the root of Jesse and from the fruit of David's loins, the one who would reward the blind as well? But the blind were not yet, I think, of Marcion's kind, so that this was the faith of that blind man, by which he believed in the words, “Jesus, son of David.” He who both knew himself to be this and wished to be known as this by all, granted to the man's faith, which already had better eyes and possessed the true light, outward sight as well, so that we too might learn the rule of faith and at the same time its reward: whoever wishes to see, let him believe that Jesus is the son of David through the virgin's descent; whoever does not so believe will not hear from him, “Your faith has saved you,” and so will remain blind, falling into the antithesis, which itself falls (into) an antithesis. For so the blind is accustomed to lead the blind. For if, (because) the blind had once offended David at the recovery of Zion by resisting his entry — as a figure of the people who were likewise blind and would one day refuse to admit Christ the son of David — therefore Christ, on the contrary, came to the aid of a blind man, to show by this that he was not the son of David, being by a difference of disposition good to the blind whom David had ordered to be struck down, then why did he say he had granted it to faith, and to a wrong faith at that? But in fact this too (the son of David) (gives) an antithesis to be beaten back with his own weapon. For because the blind had offended David, and now a man of the same flesh had presented himself as a suppliant to the son of David, therefore the son of David, as though appeased by his making amends, restored his sight with a testimony to his faith, by which he had believed this very thing, that the son of David must be entreated by him. And yet it was, I think, the audacity of those men, not their infirmity, that had offended David.

The house of Zacchaeus too obtains salvation. By what merit? Had he too believed that Christ had come from Marcion's (god)? But the voice of that blind man was still in everyone's ears — “Have mercy on me, Jesus, son of David” — and “All the people gave praise to God,” not Marcion's God, but David's. Indeed, Zacchaeus, even though a foreigner, yet perhaps breathed upon by some knowledge of the Scriptures from his dealings with the Jews — though it is more if he did so without even knowing Isaiah — had fulfilled his commands: “Break your bread,” he says, “for the hungry, and bring those who have no roof into your house” — this he was doing at that very moment, feeding the Lord whom he had received into his house — “and if you see the naked, cover him”; this he was promising at that very moment, offering half his substance for all works of mercy, loosing the bonds of oppressive contracts, letting the harassed go free, and tearing up every unjust bond, by saying: “And if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore it fourfold.” So the Lord says: “Today salvation has come to this house.” He testified that what the Creator's prophet had commanded brings salvation. And when he says, “For the Son of Man has come to save what was lost,” I no longer argue that he came to save what was lost of the one to whom it had belonged and from whom what he came to save had been lost, but I move on to the next step of another question. There is no doubt that it concerns man. Since man consists of two substances, body and soul, we must ask in which kind of substance he seems to have been lost. If in the body, then the body had been lost, not the soul. What had been lost the Son of Man saves: so the flesh too has salvation. If he had been lost in the soul, the soul's perdition is destined for salvation, and the flesh, which was not lost, is safe. If the whole man had been lost in both substances, the whole man must necessarily be saved, and the opinion of the heretics who deny the salvation of the flesh is struck down. And now the Creator's Christ is confirmed too, who, in keeping with the Creator, promised the salvation of the whole man.

The parable too of the servants who are judged according to their account of their lord's money put out at interest shows (your) god to be a judge even on the side of severity, not only loading with more but also taking away what someone seems to have had. Or if this too depicts the Creator, (austere, taking what he did not lay down and reaping what he did not sow,) here too it is he who instructs me, whose money he teaches me to put out at interest.

Christ knew where John's baptism came from. Then why did he ask as though he did not know? He knew that the Pharisees would not answer him. Then why did he ask to no purpose? Or was it to judge them out of their own mouth, or heart? Refer these things, then, to the Creator's defense and to the comparison with Christ, and consider now what would have followed if the Pharisees had given any answer to the question. Suppose they had answered that John's baptism was human: they would at once have been crushed with stones. Some Marcion would have risen up against Marcion to say: “O most good god, O god unlike the Creator's examples! Knowing that men would go headlong, he himself set them on the edge of the precipice.” For that is how they argue about the Creator in the law of the tree. But John's baptism was from heaven. “And why,” says Christ, “did you not believe him?” So he who had wanted John to be believed, since he was going to rebuke them for not believing, belonged to him whose sacrament John was administering. Certainly, when they would not report what they thought, and he in turn set against them, “Neither do I tell you by what power I do these things,” he returned evil for evil.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” What will be God's, like Caesar's denarius? His image and likeness, of course. So he commands man to be rendered to the Creator, in whose image and likeness and name and material man has been stamped. Let Marcion's god look for coinage of his own; Christ commands man's denarius to be rendered to his own Caesar, not to a stranger; unless it is necessary … who has no denarius of his own.

It is a just and fitting rule in every question that the sense of the answer ought to bear on the point of the question. To answer one thing to one who asks another is the mark of a madman; all the more let what does not befit even a man be far from Christ. The Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, having a question about it, had set before the Lord a case from the law: a woman who, when seven brothers had died one after another, had married them according to the legal precept — whose wife was she to be counted in the resurrection? This was the matter of the question, this the substance of the inquiry; to this Christ must have answered. He feared no one, so as to seem either to have dodged questions or to have used them as an occasion to hint at what he did not otherwise teach openly. He answered, then, that the sons of this age marry — you see how pertinently to the case: because the question was about the age to come, in which he was going to lay down that no one marries, he first established that here there is marrying, where there is also dying — but those whom God has deemed worthy of the possession of that age and of the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, because they will no longer die, since they are like the angels of God, having been made sons of the resurrection. Since, then, the sense of the answer must be directed to nothing other than the point of the question, if the point of the question is settled by this sense of the answer, the Lord's answer means nothing other than what settles the question: you have the times of marriage permitted and denied, arising not from a question about marriage itself but from the question of the resurrection; you have also the confirmation of the resurrection itself and all that the Sadducees were asking about, since they were not inquiring about another god nor asking about the proper right of marriage. But if you make Christ answer about things he was not asked, you deny that he could answer what he was asked, as though he were caught, of course, by the wisdom of the Sadducees.

Now, more than is needed and after the rule has been laid down, I will go over the matter against their connected arguments. For having got hold of the text of Scripture, “But those whom God has deemed worthy of that age,” they run through it in reading so as to join “of that age” to “God,” in order to make another god, the god of that age; whereas it should be read, “But those whom God has deemed worthy,” so that, with a pause made here after “God,” “of that age” belongs to what follows, that is: “whom God has deemed worthy of the possession of that age and of the resurrection.” For the question was not about God but about the state of that age, whose wife she would be after the resurrection in that age. So too they twist the answer about marriage itself, so that “the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage” is said of the men of the Creator, who permits marriage, whereas those whom the god of that age — the other one, of course — has deemed worthy of the resurrection do not marry even here, because they are not sons of this age. … since, when he was asked about the marriages of that age and not of this, he denied those about which he was asked. And so those who had taken in the very force of the words and of the delivery and of the pauses understood nothing but what bore on the matter of the question; and so the scribes said: “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For he had confirmed the resurrection by setting forth its form against the opinion of the Sadducees. In short, he did not refuse the testimony of those who had taken him to have answered in this way.

But if the scribes thought Christ was the son of David, while David himself calls him Lord, what has this to do with a Christ who is not David's? Was he beating down the error of the scribes? (No.) Rather he was securing honor for David's Christ, whom he confirmed as Lord rather than as son of David — which would not suit a destroyer of the Creator. But on our side how fitting the interpretation is! For he who had once been invoked by that blind man as (son of David), and had then kept silent on the point, since no scribes were present, now of his own accord deliberately brought it forward in their presence, to show that he, whom the blind man had proclaimed, according to the scribes' teaching, only as David's son, was also his Lord; rewarding the blind man's faith, by which he had believed him to be the son of David, and striking at the tradition of the scribes, by which they did not know him to be David's Lord as well. Whatever tended to the glory of the Creator's Christ, no one but the Creator's Christ would so defend.

It was established long ago, concerning the ownership of the names, that they belong to him … who first both announced his Christ to men and renamed Hoshea “Jesus” (Joshua). So the shamelessness will be established of the one who says that many will come in his name — a name that is not his, if he is not the Christ and Jesus of the Creator, to whom the ownership of the names belongs. Further, he forbids them to be received, when he himself is their equal, as one who likewise came in another's name. If not, it was for him to forewarn his disciples against the lie about the name, since through the ownership of the name he possessed its truth. In short, those men will come saying, “I am the Christ”: you will receive them, you who received one just like them; for this one too did not come in his own name. What then? When the lord of the names himself comes, the Christ and Jesus of the Creator, will you reject him? And how unfair, how unjust, how unworthy of the most good god, that you should not receive the one who comes in his own name, when you have received another in his name!

Let us see also what signs he assigns to the times: wars, I think, and kingdom against kingdom and nation against nation, and pestilence and famines and earthquakes and terrors and portents from heaven, all of which befit a severe and dreadful god. When he adds too that these things must happen, what does he show himself to be, the destroyer or the approver of the Creator? He confirms that the Creator's arrangements must be fulfilled, which, as the most good, he would rather have abolished than established, grim and dreadful as they are, if they had not been his own. But before these things he foretells to them persecutions and sufferings to come, for martyrdom, surely, and for salvation. Hear it foretold in Zechariah: “The Lord almighty,” he says, “will protect them, and they will devour them, and will stone them with sling stones, and will drink their blood like wine, and will fill the bowls as of the altar; and the Lord will save them in that day like sheep, his people, because holy stones are rolled.” And lest you think these things are foretold of the sufferings which awaited them at the hands of foreigners in so many wars, look at their kinds. No one, in foretelling wars to be fought with regular arms, lists stoning, which belongs rather to popular gatherings and unarmed riots; no one measures such rivers of blood in war by the capacity of bowls, or makes them equal to the bloodying of one altar; no one calls sheep those who fall in war armed and themselves fighting with the same ferocity, but those who are slaughtered in their own proper character and patience, surrendering themselves rather than defending themselves. In fact he says, “Because holy stones are rolled,” not because soldiers fight. For stones are also foundations, on which we are built, having been built up, according to Paul, on the foundations of the apostles, who, as holy stones, are rolled, set in the way for all to stumble against. So here too he forbids them to think out beforehand what they should answer before tribunals, he who suggested to Balaam what he had not thought of, indeed the opposite of what he had thought of, and promised a mouth to Moses when he pleaded slowness of tongue. And the very wisdom which no one will resist he showed through Isaiah: “This one will say, I am God's; and (this one) will cry, In the name of Jacob; and another will be inscribed in the name of Israel.” For what is wiser and more unanswerable than a simple and open confession in the name of a martyr, prevailing with God, which is the meaning of “Israel”? No wonder that he forbade thinking things out beforehand, who himself received from the Father the supply of timely speech: “The Lord gives me the tongue of discipline … when I ought to utter a word,” unless Marcion brings in a Christ not subject to the Father.

That persecutions from one's nearest, and blasphemy of the name out of hatred, were foretold, I need not show again. “But by endurance,” he says, “you will save yourselves”; of which, of course, the psalm speaks: “The endurance of the righteous will not perish forever,” since elsewhere too: “Precious is the death of the righteous,” through endurance, no doubt; and Zechariah too: “But there will be a crown for those who have endured.” But do not dare to argue that the apostles were harassed by the Jews as heralds of another god; remember that the prophets too, who suffered the same things from the Jews, were nevertheless apostles of no other god than the Creator.

But having next pointed out the time of the destruction, when Jerusalem would begin to be surrounded by armies, he recounts the signs of the very end: portents of sun and moon and stars, and on earth the distress of nations bewildered as by the roar of the surging sea, in expectation of the evils hanging over the world. That the very powers of the heavens are to be shaken, hear Joel: “And I will give portents in heaven, and on earth blood and fire and vapor of smoke; the sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes.” You have Habakkuk too: “The earth will be torn by rivers; the peoples will see you and be in labor; scattering the waters in your course; the abyss gave its voice; the height of its fear was lifted up; the sun and moon stood in their order; your flashes will go into light, your shield like lightning into brightness; in your threat you will diminish the earth, and in your indignation you will bring down the nations.” The Lord's pronouncements and the prophets' agree, I think, about the shakings of the world and of the earth, of the elements and of the nations. After this, what does the Lord say? “And then they will see the Son of Man coming from the heavens with great power. And when these things come to pass, you will stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption will be drawing near,” namely at the time of the kingdom, of which the parable itself will be added: “So you too, when you see all these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God has drawn near.” This will be the great and glorious day of the Lord, of the Son of Man coming from the heavens, according to Daniel: “Behold, one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven,” and so on, “and royal power was given to him” — which in the parable he had gone away to request, leaving his money with his servants to be put out at interest — “and all the nations” — which the Father had promised him in the psalm: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance” — “and all glory serving him, and his power everlasting, which will not be taken away, and his kingdom, which will not be corrupted,” because in it they will neither die nor marry, but will be like angels. Of the same coming of the Son of Man and its fruit, in Habakkuk: “You went out for the salvation of your people, to save your anointed ones,” those, namely, who will stand up and lift up their heads, redeemed in the time of the kingdom. So, since the things that belong to the promises agree in the same way as those that belong to the shakings, by the harmony of the prophetic and the Lord's pronouncements, you will be able to insert no distinction here, so as to refer the shakings to the Creator, as a god of cruelty — things which the most good god ought not even to permit, much less look forward to — and to credit the promises to the most good god, which the Creator, not knowing him, would not have prophesied. Or if the Creator prophesied them as his own, not differing from the promises of (your) Christ, he will be equal in generosity to the most good god, and no more will seem to be promised by your Christ than by my Son of Man. You will find the very course of the gospel Scripture, from the disciples' question to the parable of the fig tree, so bound up in its connected sense with the Son of Man on both sides that it joins to him both the sad and the glad, both the shakings and the promises, and you cannot separate either part from him. For since the coming of one Son of Man is set between two outcomes, the shakings and the promises, both the troubles of the nations and the longings of the saints must belong to one Son of Man, because he is placed in the middle so as to (be) common to both outcomes, bringing the one to a close by his coming, namely the troubles of the nations, and beginning the other, namely the longings of the saints; so that, if you grant that the coming of the Son of Man is my Christ's, and so attribute to him the impending evils which precede his coming, you are compelled also to ascribe to him the good things which arise from his coming; … you are compelled also to attribute to him the evils which precede his coming. For the evils are as bound up with the coming of the Son of Man by preceding it as the good things are by following it. Ask yourself, then, which of the two Christs you will set in the person of the one Son of Man, to whom both arrangements are referred; either you have made the Creator most good, or your god harsh, by nature. In sum, consider the example of the parable itself: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees: when they have put forth fruit, men understand that summer has drawn near; so you too, when you see these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God is near.” For if the fruiting of the trees gives a sign of summer by preceding it, so too the conflicts of the world give advance notice of the kingdom by preceding it. Now every sign belongs to the one to whom the thing it signifies belongs, and on every thing a sign is set by the one to whom the thing belongs. So if the conflicts are signs of the kingdom, as the fruiting is of summer, then the kingdom too is the Creator's, to whom the conflicts that are signs of the kingdom are ascribed. The most good god had said beforehand that these things must happen, so dreadful and so dire, things surely foretold by the prophets and the law: so far was he from destroying the law and the prophets, since he confirms that what they had foretold must be fulfilled.

He further insists that heaven and earth will not pass away until all things are accomplished. What things are these? If those (foretold) by the Creator, the elements will rightly bear it that their own Lord's order be carried out; if those of the most good god, I doubt whether heaven and earth would bear the fulfillment of what a rival has decreed. If the Creator puts up with this, he is not a jealous God. Come now, let heaven and earth pass away — for so their Lord has determined — so long as his word abides forever — for so Isaiah too declared —; let the disciples too be warned lest at any time their hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and worldly cares, and that day come upon them suddenly like a snare, as upon those who, surely, have forgotten God out of fullness and preoccupation with the world — this will be Moses' warning —: so the one who will deliver from the snare of that day is the one who long ago gave this warning.

There were other places too in Jerusalem for teaching, and places outside Jerusalem to withdraw to. But by day he taught in the temple, as one who had foretold through Hosea: “In my temple they found me, and there it was discussed with them”; but at night he withdrew to the Mount of Olives; for so Zechariah had pointed out: “And his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives.” There were also hours suited to hearing: they had to gather at dawn, because when he had said through Isaiah, “The Lord gives me the tongue of discipline,” he added, “He has set my ear in the morning to hear.” If this is dissolving the prophecies, what will fulfilling them be?

Likewise he knew also when he ought to suffer, since the law had prefigured his suffering. For out of so many feasts of the Jews he chose the day of the Passover. For with this in view Moses had declared the sacred sign: “It is the Lord's Passover.” Therefore he also showed his desire: “With desire I have desired to eat the Passover with you before I suffer.” O destroyer of the law, who had desired even to keep the Passover! No doubt the Jewish mutton had delighted him. Or was he the one who, being about to be led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a sheep before its shearer so not to open his mouth, desired to fulfill the figure of his saving blood? He could have been betrayed by any stranger too, were it not that, as I would have to say, even in this the psalm was fulfilled: “He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me.” He could also have been betrayed without a price. For what need of a betrayer was there for one who, offending the people openly, could no more have been betrayed than seized by force? But this would have suited another Christ, not one who was fulfilling prophecies. For it is written: “Because they sold the righteous.” For both the amount of the price and its outcome — when Judas repented and it was called back and given for the purchase of the potter's field, as is contained in Matthew's gospel — Jeremiah foretold: “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him who was valued” — or honored — “and gave them for the potter's field.” So, having declared that with desire he had desired to eat the Passover as his own — for it would be unworthy of God to desire anything belonging to another — he made the bread which he had taken and distributed to the disciples his body, by saying, “This is my body,” that is, the figure of my body. But there would not have been a figure unless there were a body of truth. An empty thing, which is what a phantom is, could not take on a figure. Or if he made up the bread into a body for himself because he lacked the reality of a body, then he ought to have handed over bread for us. It would have suited Marcion's emptiness for bread to be crucified. But why does he call bread his body, and not rather a melon, which Marcion had in place of a heart, not understanding that this was an ancient figure of the body of Christ, who says through Jeremiah: “They devised a plan against me, saying: Come, let us put wood into his bread,” that is, the cross into his body? So the one who sheds light on ancient things declared plainly enough what he had then meant the bread to signify, by calling his body bread. So too, in mentioning the cup, establishing the testament sealed with his blood, he confirmed the substance of his body. For there can be blood of no body but one of flesh. For even if some quality of body that is not fleshly is set against us, it will surely not have blood unless it is fleshly. So the proof of the body will stand on the testimony of the flesh, and the proof of the flesh on the testimony of the blood. And that you may recognize the ancient figure of blood too in wine, Isaiah will be at hand: “Who is this,” he says, “who comes from Edom, the redness of his garments from Bozrah, so comely in his robe, with violence and strength? Why are your garments red, and your clothing as from the floor of the winepress, full and trodden?” For the prophetic Spirit, as if already contemplating the Lord coming to his passion, clothed, that is, in flesh so as to suffer in it, depicts the bloody condition of the flesh in the redness of the garments, trodden and pressed out by the force of the passion as in the floor of the winepress, since from there too men come down as though bloodied by the redness of the wine. Much more plainly Genesis, in the blessing of Judah, from whose tribe Christ's descent according to the flesh was to come, already then sketched Christ in Judah: “He will wash,” it says, “his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape,” showing the flesh by the robe and garment, and the blood by the wine. So now too he consecrated his blood in wine, who then figured wine as blood.

“Woe,” he says, “to him through whom the Son of Man is betrayed.” So it is now established that “woe” must be understood as an outcry of imprecation and threat, and attributed to one who is angry and offended, unless Judas was to carry off so great a crime with impunity. But if with impunity, the “woe” is empty; if not with impunity, then surely he was to be punished by the one against whom he committed the crime of betrayal. Moreover, if he knowingly allowed a man whom he himself had taken into his company to rush into so great a crime, then stop raking up against the Creator, in the case of Adam, charges which are turned back on your god too: either that he did not know, since he did not in foresight stand in the way of the one about to sin; or that he could not stand in the way, if he did (not) fail to know; or that he did not want to, if he both knew and could, and so must be judged malicious, since he allowed his own man to perish through sin. I advise you, then, to recognize the Creator in this one too, rather than make the most good god equal to him, against your own opinion. For by destining Peter, who had spoken somewhat presumptuously, to denial, he shows you a jealous God. He had to be betrayed with a kiss too, as the Christ of prophecy, namely as the Son of him who was loved by the people with their lips.

Brought into the council, he is asked whether he is the Christ. About what Christ would the Jews have asked, if not their own? Why then did he not, even then, reveal another to them? So that he could suffer, you say; that is, so that that most good one might plunge people who were still ignorant into crime. And yet even if he had told them, he would have suffered. “For if I tell you,” he says, “you will not believe.” Moreover, not believing, they would have persisted in putting him to death. And why would he not have been all the more likely to suffer, if he had revealed (himself) as belonging to another god, and therefore as the Creator's adversary? So it was not in order to suffer that even then he refrained from showing himself to be another, but because they were eager to wring a confession from his mouth, and yet would not believe him even if he confessed, they who ought to have recognized him from the works that fulfilled the Scriptures. So it was fitting that one to whom recognition was owed without asking should conceal himself. And yet, still reaching out a hand to them, he says: “From now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” For he was suggesting that he was the Son of Man from Daniel's prophecy and the one seated at the right hand of God from David's psalm. So, enlightened by this saying and by comparison with Scripture as to whom he wished to be understood as, they say: “So you are the Son of God?” Of what God, if not the one whom alone they knew? Of what God, if not the one whom they remembered saying to his Son in the psalm, “Sit at my right hand”? (But he answered, “You say so,” as if to mean, “Not I.”) On the contrary, he confirmed that he was what they had said, while they were questioning him again. But how will you prove that they too spoke interrogatively and not affirmatively — “So you are the Son of God” — in the sense that, because he had indirectly shown through the Scriptures that he was to be understood as the Son of God, they took it thus: “So you are the Son of God, which you will not say openly”? And so he too answered “You say so” affirmatively; and so much was this his meaning that they persisted in what his words implied.

For having brought him to Pilate they began to charge him with calling himself Christ the King, no doubt (the Son of God who would sit at God's right hand). Otherwise they would have pressed him with some other charge, uncertain whether he had called himself Son of God, (un)less he had said “You say so” in such a way as to mean that he was what they said. To Pilate too, when he asked, “Are you the Christ?”, he (answered) likewise, “You say so,” lest from fear of authority he should seem to have answered more fully.

So the Lord was set up in judgment — “And he has set his people in judgment; the Lord himself comes into judgment with the elders and rulers of the people,” according to Isaiah — and from then on he fulfilled everything written about his passion: “The nations raged together, and the peoples plotted vain things; the kings of the earth stood up and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.” The nations were the Romans who were with Pilate; the peoples, the tribes of Israel; (the kings) are seen in Herod, (the rulers) in the chief priests. For when he was sent by Pilate to Herod as a gift, he kept faith with the words of Hosea, who had prophesied of Christ: “And they will lead him bound as a present to the king.” Herod was indeed delighted at seeing Jesus, and heard no word from him. For “like a lamb before its shearer so he did not open his mouth,” because the Lord had given him the tongue of discipline to know when he ought to utter a word — that tongue, namely, which he said in the psalm cleaves to his throat, and which he then proved by not speaking.

And Barabbas, most guilty in his life, is granted as though he were good, while Christ, most righteous, is demanded for death as a murderer. And two criminals too are crucified on either side of him, so that he might be reckoned among the wicked. His clothing, divided by the soldiers partly (and partly) given over to the lot, Marcion has plainly removed, with an eye to the prophecy of the psalm: “They divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.” Then remove the cross itself too. For the same psalm is not silent about it: “They pierced my hands and feet.” The whole outcome is read in it: “Dogs surrounded me, the synagogue of evildoers besieged me. All who looked at me mocked me with sneering noses; they spoke with their lips and shook their heads: He hoped in God; let him deliver him.” What use now is it to remove the testimony of the garments? Keep the spoils of your falsification: the whole psalm is the garments of Christ.

But see, the elements too are shaken. For their Lord was suffering. Otherwise, if it had been their adversary who was harmed, the sky would have blossomed with lights, the sun would have exulted the more in its rays, the day would have stood still the longer, gladly watching Marcion's Christ hanging on the gibbet. These arguments would have suited my case even if these things had not been foretold: “I will clothe the heaven with darkness,” says Isaiah; this will be the day of which Amos too says: “And it will be on that day, says the Lord, the sun will set at noon” — you have the sixth hour indicated too — “and it will grow dark over the earth.” The veil of the temple too was torn, by the bursting out of the angel abandoning the daughter of Zion like a watchtower in a vineyard and a hut in a cucumber field. O how he persisted in expressing himself even in the thirtieth psalm! He cries out to the Father: … , so that even while dying he might fulfill the prophets with his last cry. With this word he breathed out his spirit. Who did? Did the spirit breathe out itself, or the flesh the spirit? But the spirit could not breathe itself out. What breathes out is one thing, what is breathed out another. If the spirit is breathed out, it must be breathed out by another. But if he had been spirit alone, he would rather have been said to have departed than to have breathed out. Who, then, breathes out the spirit but the flesh, which both breathes while it has the spirit and so breathes it out when it loses it? In short, if it was not flesh but a phantom of flesh, and a phantom was spirit, and the spirit breathed itself out and by breathing out departed, then without doubt the phantom departed when the spirit, which was the phantom, departed, and the phantom was nowhere to be seen along with the spirit. Did nothing, then, remain on the wood, nothing hang there even after the breathing out? Was nothing asked of Pilate, nothing taken down from the gibbet, nothing wrapped in the linen, nothing laid in the new tomb? But it was not nothing. What then was it? If a phantom, then the spirit was still in it. If the spirit had departed, then it had taken the phantom away with it. It remains for heretical shamelessness to say that the phantom of a phantom remained there; but of course Joseph knew it was a body that he handled with all piety, that Joseph who had not consented with the Jews in their crime, a blessed man, who did not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the pestilent.

The one who buried the Lord had to be foretold too, and even then deservedly blessed, if prophecy did not pass over even the service of those women who came together at the tomb before dawn with the spices they had prepared. For of this he speaks through Hosea: “And they will seek my face; before dawn they will watch for me, saying: Let us go and return to the Lord, for he has torn and he will heal us; he has struck and he will have mercy on us; he will heal us after two days; on the third day we shall rise again.” For who would not believe that these words were turning over in the minds of those women, between the grief of their present bereavement, by which they seemed to themselves to have been struck by the Lord, and the hope of his resurrection, by which they thought they would be restored? But since the body was not found, his burial had been taken away from the midst, according to Isaiah. And two angels also appeared there. God's word, which stands on two witnesses, used generally to employ about that many attendants. The women too returning from the tomb and from that vision of angels Isaiah foresaw: “Women,” he says, “coming from the vision, come,” namely to announce the Lord's resurrection.

And it is well that the disciples' unbelief persisted, so that our defense might stand firm to the end: that Christ Jesus revealed himself to the disciples as no other than the Christ of the prophets. For when two of them were on a journey and the Lord had joined them, without its being apparent that it was he, and even feigning ignorance of what had happened, they said: “But we thought that he was the redeemer of Israel,” surely meaning their own Christ, that is, the Creator's. So far had he been from revealing himself to them as another. Otherwise they would not have thought him the Creator's; and when he was thought to be the Creator's, he would not have tolerated this opinion of himself if he were not the one he was thought to be. Or he himself will be the author of error and a betrayer of the truth, contrary to the title of the most good god. But neither after the resurrection did he show himself to them as other than the one they had told him they thought he was. He plainly inveighed against them: “O foolish and slow of heart in not believing all that he spoke to you.” What had he spoken? That he belonged to another god? Prove it, and I surrender. Or the same things the angels said to the women: “Remember what he said to you in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be betrayed and crucified and rise on the third day”? And why “must,” unless because it had been so written by God the Creator? So he rebuked them as men offended at the passion alone and doubtful about the resurrection announced to them by the women, and because of this they had not believed that he was the one they had thought him to be. So, wishing them to believe what they had thought, he confirmed that he was the one they had thought him to be, namely the Creator's Christ, the redeemer of Israel.

And as for the reality of his body, what could be clearer? When they hesitated whether he might be a phantom, or rather believed him to be a phantom, he says: “Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; for a spirit does not have bones, as you see that I have.” And Marcion was unwilling to erase from his gospel certain things that tell against him — deliberately, I suppose — so that, from what he could have erased and did not, it might either be denied that he erased what he did erase, or be said that he had good reason to erase it; and he spares only those passages which he subverts no less by misinterpreting than he would by deleting. So he wants it to have been said thus: “A spirit does not have bones, as you see me having,” as though “as you see me having” referred to the spirit, that is, not having bones, like a spirit. And what is the reason for this contortion, when he could simply have said: “Because a spirit does not have bones, as you see me not having”? And why does he offer to their inspection his hands and feet, which are members made of bones, if he did not have bones? Why does he add, “And know that it is I,” whom, of course, they had known before as having a body? Or if he was a phantom through and through, why did he rebuke them for believing him a phantom? But in fact, when they still did not believe, he asked for food, so as to show that he had teeth too.

We have fulfilled our undertaking, I think. We have exhibited Jesus Christ, in his teachings, sayings, affections, thoughts, mighty works, sufferings, and even his resurrection, as the Christ of the prophets and none other than the Creator's, since also, in sending the apostles to preach to all nations, he commanded them in fulfillment of the psalm: that their sound should go out into all the earth and their words to the ends of the earth. I pity you, Marcion: you have labored in vain. For the Christ Jesus in your gospel is mine.

Nothing is without an origin except God alone. And just as origin comes first in the state of all things, so it must also come first in the examination of them, so that one may be clear about their state; for you cannot discern what a thing is like unless you are sure that it is, once you have learned where it comes from. And so, brought by the order of this little work to this subject, I ask Marcion also for the origin of the apostle Paul: I, a new sort of disciple and the hearer of no one else, who for the present believe nothing except that nothing is to be believed rashly, and that whatever is believed without knowledge of its origin is believed rashly; and who with every right bring this inquiry to careful scrutiny, since a man is affirmed to me as an apostle whom I do not find in the roll of the apostles in the Gospel. Then, hearing that he was chosen afterwards by the Lord, when the Lord was already at rest in heaven, I judge it a kind of lack of foresight if Christ did not know beforehand that he needed him, but, when the office of the apostolate had already been ordered and its holders sent off to their work, thought that he must be added on the spur of the moment rather than by foresight: by necessity, so to speak, not by will. Therefore, shipmaster from Pontus, if you have never taken smuggled or unlawful goods aboard your boats, if you have never made off with or adulterated a cargo, then, being more cautious and more faithful in the things of God, tell us, please, under what bill of lading you took on the apostle Paul, who stamped him with the mark of his title, who handed him over to you, who put him aboard, so that you may confidently unload him; lest he be proved to belong to the One who produced all the documents of his apostleship. He himself, he says, professed himself an apostle, and that “not from men nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ.” Certainly anyone can profess himself; but his profession is completed by another's authority. One writes, another signs; one seals, another enters it in the record. No one is both his own claimant and his own witness. Besides, you have certainly read that many will come who say, “I am the Christ.” If there is one who falsely claims to be Christ, how much more one who proclaims himself an apostle of Christ? So far I am playing the part of a disciple and an inquirer, so as from here on both to blunt your faith, since you have nothing to prove it from, and to put your impudence to the blush, since you lay claim to him yet do not accept the means by which you could lay claim to him. Let Christ belong to another, and let the apostle now belong to another too, so long as they are proved only from the Creator's documents. For Genesis too promised me Paul long ago. Among those figures and prophetic blessings that Jacob spoke over his sons, when he turned to Benjamin he said: “Benjamin is a ravening wolf; in the morning he will still devour, and at evening he will give food.” For he foresaw that Paul would arise from the tribe of Benjamin, a ravening wolf devouring in the morning, that is, in the first part of his life laying waste the Lord's flocks as a persecutor of the churches, and then at evening giving food, that is, as his life was already declining, feeding Christ's sheep as teacher of the nations. So too Saul's harsh pursuit of David at first, and afterwards his repentance and amends when he received good for evil, foreshadowed nothing other than Paul in Saul, according to his tribe, and Jesus in David, according to the virgin's descent. If these mysteries of figures displease you, at any rate the Acts of the Apostles have handed down to me this course of Paul's, which you too must not deny. From there I show that the apostle, once a persecutor, was “not from men nor through a man”; from there I am led to believe him myself; from there I drive you from defending him, and I do not fear your saying, “So you deny the apostle Paul?” I do not blaspheme the one I am protecting. I deny him in order to compel you to prove him; I deny him in order to prove that he is mine. Either, if you look to our faith, accept what makes it; or, if you appeal to yours, produce what lays its foundation. Either prove that what you believe is so, or, if you do not prove it, how do you believe it? Or what sort of believer are you, set against the one by whom alone what you believe is proved to be? Take the apostle now from my side, as you took Christ: as much my apostle as my Christ. Here too we shall fight along the same lines and challenge you on the same ground of prescription: namely, that an apostle who is denied to be the Creator's, indeed who is put forward against the Creator, must teach nothing, know nothing, will nothing according to the Creator, and above all must proclaim another god with as much constancy as he broke away from the Creator's law. For it is not likely that, in turning people away from Judaism, he would not equally show into faith in which god he was turning them, since no one could pass over from the Creator without knowing to whom he was to pass. For either Christ had already revealed another god, and then the apostle's testimony would follow as well, if only so that he should not be thought an apostle of a god other than the one Christ had revealed, and because one who had already been revealed by Christ could not be kept hidden by the apostle; or Christ had revealed nothing of the kind about God, and then it was all the more the apostle's duty to reveal him, since he could no longer be revealed by anyone else, and he would without doubt not be believed in if he were not revealed even by the apostle. We have laid this down beforehand so that we may declare from here on that we shall prove, just as we proved it of Christ, that no other god was carried about by the apostle; and this from Paul's own letters, which the form of the heretic's gospel must already have led us to judge in advance to be likewise mutilated, even in their number.

We too acknowledge that the letter that teaches the Galatians is the principal one against Judaism. For we embrace that entire removal of the old law, as itself coming from the Creator's arrangement, as we have often discussed already in this series with regard to the renewal foretold by the prophets of our God. Now if the Creator promised that the old things would cease, since new things were to arise, and Christ marked the time of that departure (“the law and the prophets until John”), setting in John the boundary between the two orders, of the old things ending from then on and of the new beginning, then necessarily the apostle too, in Christ revealed after John, weakens the old and confirms the new, and so is concerned for faith in no other god than the Creator, with whom it was foretold that the old things would pass away. So both the dismantling of the law and the building up of the gospel make for my case in this letter too, bearing as they do on that presumption of the Galatians by which they presumed that Christ, as being the Creator's, was to be believed with the Creator's law kept intact, since it still seemed incredible that the law should be laid aside by its own author. Further, if they had heard of an entirely other god from the apostle, they would certainly have known of themselves that they must withdraw from the law of that god whom they had left to follow another. For who would wait any longer to learn that one who had received a new god ought to follow a new rule of life? No: because the same Deity was preached in the gospel that had always been known in the law, but not the same rule of life, this was the whole point at issue: whether the Creator's law ought to be excluded by the gospel in the Creator's Christ. Take away this issue, and there is no question. And if there were no question, since everyone would recognize of his own accord that he must depart from the Creator's order through faith in the other god, the apostle would have had no occasion to teach so insistently what faith itself would have dictated unasked. So the whole aim of this letter teaches nothing else than the departure of the law as coming from the Creator's arrangement, as we shall show further. If, likewise, he makes no mention of any new god (and he would have done so nowhere more than on this subject, so as to set out the reason for dismissing the law by this single and most sufficient definition, a new deity), it is plain in what sense he writes: “I am amazed that you are so quickly being transferred from him who called you into grace to another gospel”: another in conduct, not in religion; in rule of life, not in deity; since the gospel of Christ was to call them away from the law to grace, not from the Creator to another god. For no one had moved them away from the Creator, so that they might seem to be transferred to another gospel in that sense, as though in being transferred to the Creator. For when he adds that there is no other gospel at all, he confirms that the one he defends is the Creator's. For the Creator too promises a gospel, saying through Isaiah, “Go up onto a high mountain, you who bring good news to Zion; lift up your voice in your strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem”; and again, in the person of the apostles, “How timely are the feet of those who bring good news of peace, who bring good news of good things”: to the nations too, of course, since he also says, “In his name the nations will hope,” that is, in Christ's, to whom he says, “I have set you as a light of the nations.” Now if there is also a gospel of the new god, which you hold the apostle was then defending, then there are two gospels belonging to two gods, and the apostle will have lied in saying that there is no other at all, since there is another; when he could have defended his own gospel by demonstrating it rather than by declaring it the only one. But perhaps, to escape from this, you will say: “And that is why he added, ‘Even if an angel from heaven should preach a gospel otherwise, let him be anathema,’ because he knew that the Creator too would preach a gospel.” Again you entangle yourself. For this is what binds you: to confirm two gospels is not the part of one who has already denied that there is another. Yet his meaning is clear, since he put his own person first: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel otherwise.” It is said by way of example. Besides, if he himself would not preach otherwise, neither would an angel. So he named an angel for this reason, that men should be believed all the less when not even an angel, or even an apostle, was to be believed; not in order to refer the angel to the Creator's gospel. Then, running through the course of his conversion from persecutor to apostle, he confirms the scripture of the Acts, in which the very subject of this letter is also recognized: that certain people intervened who said that one must be circumcised and that the law of Moses must be kept; and that the apostles, then consulted on this question, announced by the authority of the Spirit that burdens were not to be laid on men which the fathers themselves had not been able to bear. And if in this too the Acts of the Apostles agree with Paul, it is now plain why you reject them: because they preach no other god than the Creator and no Christ other than the Creator's; since the fulfilment of the promise of the Holy Spirit too is proved from no other document than the Acts. It is surely not likely that they should agree with the apostle in part, when they show his career in accordance with his own testimony, and disagree in part, when they proclaim the deity of the Creator in Christ, as though Paul had not followed the preaching of the apostles, when it was from them that he received the pattern for unteaching the law.

Then he writes that he went up to Jerusalem after fourteen years to seek the backing of Peter and the other apostles, in order to confer with them about the rule of his gospel, lest he had run or should run in vain for so many years, that is, if he were preaching in any way short of their pattern. So much did he desire to be approved and confirmed by those whom, if anyone, you want to be understood as closer akin to Judaism. And when he says that not even Titus was circumcised, he begins to show that only the question of circumcision had been stirred up, out of a continuing defense of the law, by those whom he therefore calls false brothers brought in secretly. They were going on to establish nothing other than the continuance of the law, out of a faith in the Creator that was no doubt intact, and so were perverting the gospel, not by tampering with Scripture so as to fashion a Christ of the Creator, but by retaining the old rule of life so as not to exclude the Creator's law. “Because of false brothers brought in secretly,” he says, “who had slipped in to spy out our freedom which we have in Christ, to bring us into slavery, we did not yield in submission even for an hour.” Let us attend both to the sense itself and to its reason, and the corruption of the text will appear. When he first says, “But not even Titus, who was with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised,” and then adds, “because of false brothers brought in secretly,” and the rest, he begins to give the reason for the opposite action, showing why he did what he would not have done if that on account of which he did it had not happened. Tell me, then: if those false brothers had not slipped in to spy out their freedom, would they have yielded in submission? I think not. So they yielded because there were people for whose sake one had to yield. For this suited a faith still raw and still in suspense about keeping the law, when the apostle himself too was anxious lest he had run or should run in vain. So the false brothers who were spying out Christian freedom had to be thwarted, lest they carry it off into the slavery of Judaism before Paul knew that he had not run in vain, before his predecessors gave him their right hands, before he took up the office of preaching to the nations with their consent. So of necessity he yielded for a time; and in this way his reason is consistent for circumcising Timothy and for bringing shaven men into the temple, which are recorded in the Acts. So true are these things that they agree with the apostle's own profession that he became a Jew to the Jews to win the Jews, and one living under the law for the sake of those who lived under the law; and so also for the sake of those men who had been brought in; and finally that he became all things to all people to win all. If these things too require to be understood from this passage, this too no one will doubt: that Paul was a preacher of that God and Christ whose law, though he was excluding it, he had nevertheless meanwhile admitted for the times; a law that he would have had to clear away at once if he had brought forward a new god. It is well, then, that Peter and James and John gave Paul their right hands and made an agreement on the division of duties, that Paul should go to the nations and they to the circumcision, “only that they should remember the poor”: this too according to the law of the Creator, who cherishes the poor and needy, as was proved in the examination of your gospel. So it is clear that the question concerned the law alone, since it is shown what of the law it was fitting to keep. But he rebukes Peter for not walking with a straight foot toward the truth of the gospel. He rebukes him indeed, yet for nothing else than inconsistency in his way of eating, which he varied according to the kind of people present, fearing those who were of the circumcision; not for any difference of deity. On that point he would have withstood others to their face too, he who did not spare Peter himself for the lesser matter of wavering conduct, if he had believed in the way the Marcionites want. For the rest, let the apostle go on, denying that a man is justified by works of the law, but by faith: faith, however, in that God to whom the law also belongs. For he would not have labored to distinguish faith from the law if a difference of deity itself, had there been one, had already distinguished them unaided. Rightly he did not rebuild what he had destroyed. And the law was to be destroyed from the time the voice of John cried in the wilderness, “Prepare the ways of the Lord,” so that the valleys and hills and mountains should be filled and brought low, and the crooked and rough made straight and level: that is, the difficulties of the law turned into the ease of the gospel. He had remembered, too, that the time of the psalm had come: “Let us burst their bonds from us and cast their yoke from us,” since “the nations raged and the peoples devised vain things; the kings of the earth stood up and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ”; so that a man should now be justified by the freedom of faith, not by the slavery of the law, because “the righteous lives by faith.” And if the prophet Habakkuk declared this, you have the apostle confirming the prophets, as Christ did too. So the faith by which the righteous will live will belong to the same God as the law by which the worker is not justified. Likewise, if in the law there is a curse and in faith a blessing, you have both set forth with the Creator: “Behold,” he says, “I have set before you a curse and a blessing.” You cannot claim a difference of gods on this ground (a difference which, though it is one of things, is not therefore one of authors) when both are set forth by one author. And why Christ became a curse for us, since the apostle himself teaches it, is clear, and how much it makes for us, that is, for faith in the Creator. For it will not seem that, because the Creator pronounced, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,” Christ therefore belongs to another god and was for that reason already cursed by the Creator in the law. Or how could the Creator have cursed in advance one he did not know? And why is it not more fitting for the Creator to have given his own Son up to his own curse than for that god of yours to have subjected him to a curse, and that for a man who was a stranger to him? In short, if this seems cruel in the Creator toward his Son, it is equally so in your god; but if it is reasonable in yours, it is equally so in mine, and more so in mine. For it will more easily be believed that he provided a blessing for man through the curse of Christ who once set both a curse and a blessing before man, than he who, by your account, never professed either. “We receive the spiritual blessing through faith,” he says: the faith, that is, by which the righteous lives according to the Creator. This, then, is what I say: that faith belongs to that God to whom faith, the pattern of grace, belongs. And when he adds, “For you are all sons of faith,” it is shown what the heretic's industry erased above, namely the mention of Abraham, in which the apostle affirms that we are sons of Abraham through faith; and in keeping with that mention he here too called us sons of faith. Otherwise, how are we sons of faith? And of whose faith, if not Abraham's? For if Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, and from that he deserved to be named father of many nations, and we, by believing God more …, are likewise justified as Abraham was, and likewise obtain life, as the righteous lives by faith, so it comes about that above he declared us sons of Abraham, as the father of faith, and here sons of faith, through which Abraham had been promised as father of the nations. The very fact that he called faith away from circumcision: was he not seeking to make them sons of Abraham, who had believed while his flesh was still uncircumcised? In short, faith in one god cannot be admitted to the pattern of the other god, so as to reckon believers as righteous, to make the righteous live by faith, to call the nations sons of faith. All this belongs to the one with whom it was already known before.

Under the same mention of Abraham, so long as he is refuted by the sense itself. “I speak still,” he says, “in human terms: when we were little children we were placed under the elements of the world, to be slaves to them.” But this is not said in human terms; it is not an illustration but the truth. For what little child (in understanding, of course, as the nations are) is not subject to the elements of the world, which he looks up to as God? What he did say then in human terms was this: “Yet no one sets aside or adds to a man's testament.” For by the example of a human testament that stands firm he was defending the divine one: “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He did not say ‘to seeds,’ as of many, but ‘to your seed,’ as of one, which is Christ.” Let Marcion's sponge blush! Except that I am going over, more than I need, what he has taken away, when it is more effective to refute him from what he has kept. “But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son”: surely he who is also God of the very times of which the world consists; who also ordained the signs of the times, suns and moons and constellations and stars; who, in short, both arranged and foretold the revelation of his Son at the end of the times: “In the last days the mountain of the Lord will be manifest,” and, “In the last days I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh,” according to Joel. It belonged to him to wait for the time to be fulfilled whose also was the end of time, as well as its beginning. But that idle god, who has no work and no prophecy and so no time of any kind, what did he ever do to bring it about that the time was fulfilled, or to wait for it until it should be fulfilled? If nothing, it is quite empty that he should have waited for the Creator's times, serving the Creator. And for what purpose did he send his Son? “To redeem those who were under the law”: that is, to make the crooked into a straight way and the rough into smooth ways, according to Isaiah, so that the old things should pass away and new ones arise (“a new law from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem”); “and that we might receive the adoption of sons,” we the nations, of course, who were not sons. For he himself will be the light of the nations, and in his name the nations will hope. So, that it might be certain that we are sons of God, “he sent his Spirit into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father.’” For “in the last days,” he says, “I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh.” Whose is this grace, if not his whose is also the promise of grace? Who is Father, if not he who is also Maker? So after these riches there was to be no turning back “to the weak and beggarly elements.” Now among the Romans, too, the first letters of the alphabet are commonly called “elements.” So he did not want to turn them away from the God of the elements of the world by disparaging those elements. (Although, when he said above, “If then you serve those who by nature are not gods,” he rebukes the error of physical, that is natural, superstition, which holds the elements to be God, yet not even so does he censure the God of the elements.) But he himself declares which elements he wants to be understood, namely the first letters of the law: “You observe days and months and times and years”; and sabbaths, I suppose, and the preparation meals and fasts and great days. For these too, like circumcision, were to cease by the Creator's decrees, who says through Isaiah: “Your new moons and sabbaths and great day I will not endure; your fasting and holidays and ceremonies my soul hates”; and through Amos: “I have hated, I have rejected your ceremonies, and I will not smell the savour in your solemn assemblies”; and again through Hosea: “I will turn away all her mirth and her ceremonies and her sabbaths and her new moons and all her solemn assemblies.” “Has he erased what he himself had established?” you say. Yes, he rather than another; or if another, then that other helped the Creator's sentence, taking away what the Creator too had condemned. But the question here is not why the Creator broke his own laws. It is enough that we have proved that he would break them, so that it is confirmed that the apostle laid down nothing against the Creator, since the very removal of the law comes from the Creator. But as thieves often drop some of their loot, which gives them away, so, I believe, Marcion left behind the last mention of Abraham, though none needed removing more, even if he partly altered it. For Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman; but the one by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, and the one by the free woman through promise. These things are allegorical (that is, they foreshadow something else); for these are the two testaments (or two “showings,” as we find it translated): one from Mount Sinai into the synagogue of the Jews, according to the law, bearing children for slavery; the other bearing children above every principality and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come, into which we have been promised, the holy church, which is our mother. And so he adds, “Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman but of the free.” He has certainly made plain that the nobility of Christianity has the sacred sign of allegory in Abraham's son born of the free woman, just as the legal slavery of Judaism has it in the son of the slave woman; and so that both dispensations belong to that God with whom we find the outline of both. The very saying, “For the freedom with which Christ has set us free,” does it not make him the liberator who was the master? For not even Galba set free other people's slaves; he would more readily have released free men. Freedom, then, will be granted by the one with whom was the slavery of the law. And rightly it was not fitting for those who had been set free to be bound again by the yoke of slavery, that is, of the law, now that the psalm had been fulfilled: “Let us burst their bonds and cast their yoke from us,” after the rulers had gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. So from those released from slavery he persisted in erasing the very mark of slavery, circumcision, on the authority, of course, of the prophetic preaching, remembering what was said through Jeremiah, “And circumcise the foreskins of your heart,” since Moses too says, “You shall circumcise your hardness of heart,” that is, not the flesh. In short, if he was excluding circumcision because he came from another god, why does he also deny that uncircumcision has any value in Christ, as he does circumcision? For he ought to have preferred the rival of what he was attacking, if he came from a god who was the rival of circumcision. But because both circumcision and uncircumcision were assigned to one God, both were void in Christ, because faith was preferred to them: that faith of which it had been written, “And in his name the nations will believe”; that faith which, by saying that it is made complete through love, he shows in this way too to be the Creator's. For whether he means the love that is toward God, this too is the Creator's: “You shall love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength”; or the love toward one's neighbour, “Your neighbour as yourself” is also the Creator's. “But he who troubles you will bear judgment.” From which god? From the best god? But he does not judge. From the Creator? But neither will he condemn one who upholds circumcision. If there will be no other judge than the Creator, then he will not condemn the defenders of the law except because he himself determined that it should cease. What now, if he even confirms it in the part in which he ought? “For the whole law,” he says, “has been fulfilled in you: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Or if he wants “has been fulfilled” to be understood as meaning that it is no longer to be fulfilled, does he then not want me to love my neighbour as myself, so that this too has ceased with the law? But this precept will have to be kept for ever. So the Creator's law has been approved even by its adversary, and has gained from him not loss but gain, its sum reduced to a single precept. But this too suits no one better than its author. And so when he says, “Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfil the law of Christ,” if this cannot be done unless one loves his neighbour as himself, it is plain that “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” through which “Bear one another's burdens” is understood, is the law of Christ, which is the Creator's; and so Christ is the Creator's, since the Creator's law is Christ's. “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked.” And yet Marcion's god can be mocked, since he knows neither how to be angry nor how to avenge. “For whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” So it is a God of recompense and judgment who threatens. “And let us not grow weary in doing good,” and, “While we have time, let us work what is good.” Deny that the Creator commanded doing good, and then let a different teaching belong to a different deity. Further, if he preaches recompense, the harvest both of corruption and of life will come from the same one. “And in due time we shall reap,” since Ecclesiastes too says, “There is a time for everything.” “But to me too” (a servant of the Creator) “the world has been crucified” (yet not the God of the world) “and I to the world” (yet not to the God of the world). For he spoke of the world with regard to its manner of life, by renouncing which we are crucified to each other and die to each other. [He calls them persecutors of Christ.] And when he adds that he bears the marks of Christ in his body (bodily marks, of course, of fetters), he has confessed that Christ's flesh was not imaginary but real and solid, since he shows its bodily marks.

The groundwork laid in the preceding letter led me not to discuss its heading, being sure that it could be discussed elsewhere as well, since it is common to all the letters and the same in each. That he prescribes for those to whom he writes not “health” but “grace and peace”: I do not ask what he, the destroyer of Judaism, has to do with a custom still Jewish (for even today the Jews greet one another in the name of peace, and formerly in the Scriptures they so saluted); but I understand that by his office he was upholding the Creator's preaching: “How ripe are the feet of those who bring good news of good things, who bring good news of peace.” For the good news of good things, that is, of God's grace, is proclaimed as peace, which he knew was to be preferred. When he announces these as “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus,” he uses common names that also suit our faith; and I do not think it can be discerned which God the Father and which Lord Jesus is proclaimed except from the attendant circumstances, as to which of the two they fit better. First, then, I lay down that God the Father is to be recognized as none other than the Creator and Founder both of man and of the universe; next, that the name of Lord is also added to the Father because of his power, which the Son too receives through the Father; then, that grace and peace belong not only to him by whom they were foretold but also to him who had been offended. For there is no grace except for an offence, and no peace except after war. And both the people, by transgressing the rule of life, and the whole human race, by ignoring nature, had both sinned and rebelled against the Creator. But Marcion's god could not be offended, both because he was unknown and because he does not know how to be angry. What grace, then, from one who was not offended? What peace from one who was not rebelled against? He says that the cross of Christ is foolishness to those who are perishing, but the power and wisdom of God to those who will attain salvation; and to show where this came from, he adds: “For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will bring to nothing.’” If these are the Creator's words and bear on the cross being counted foolishness, then both the cross and, through the cross, Christ will belong to the Creator, by whom what concerns the cross was foretold. Or if the Creator, as a rival, took away wisdom so that the cross of Christ, his adversary, should be counted foolishness, how could the Creator have declared anything about the cross of a Christ not his own, whom he did not know when he prophesied? And again, why is it that with the best god, of lavish mercy, some carry off salvation, believing the cross to be the power and wisdom of God, and others perdition, who count the cross of Christ foolishness? If this does not belong to him, it belongs to the Creator to have punished some offence of both the people and the human race by the loss of wisdom and prudence. What follows will confirm this, when he says, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” and when here too he adds why: “Since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.” But first I will discuss “the world.” Since the most subtle heretics here above all take “the world” to mean the lord of the world, we understand it of the man who is in the world, from the simple form of human speech in which we usually put the container for what it contains: “The circus shouted,” “The forum spoke,” and “The basilica murmured,” meaning those who were doing business in those places. So because man, not the God of the world, did not in wisdom know God, in which he ought to have known him (the Jew in the wisdom of the Scriptures, and every nation in the wisdom of his works), therefore the same God, who was not recognized in his wisdom, resolved to strike back at the wisdom of men with foolishness, by saving all who believe in the foolish preaching of the cross. “Since the Jews desire signs”: they who ought already to have been certain about God; “and the Greeks seek wisdom”: they who, of course, set up their own wisdom, not God's. But if a new god were being preached, what wrong had the Jews done in desiring signs by which to believe, or the Greeks in pursuing wisdom which they would rather believe? So the very recompense on Jews and Greeks confirms a jealous God and judge, who by a retribution both jealous and judicial made foolish the wisdom of the world. And if the reasons belong to him whose Scriptures are applied, then the apostle, in speaking of the Creator, teaches that the Creator, who had not been understood, is to be understood. Also, in preaching Christ as a stumbling block to the Jews, he seals the prophecy of the Creator about him, who says through Isaiah, “Behold, I have set in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.” And “the rock was Christ” even Marcion keeps. And what is “the foolishness of God that is wiser than men,” if not the cross and death of God? What is “the weakness of God that is stronger than men,” if not the birth and flesh of God? But if Christ was neither born of a virgin nor built up of flesh, and so suffered neither the cross nor death in truth, there was nothing foolish or weak in him; nor then did God choose “the foolish things of the world to confound the wise,” nor “the weak things of the world to confound the strong,” nor the dishonourable and least and despised things, “things that are not,” that is, that do not truly exist, “to confound the things that are,” that is, that truly exist. For nothing arranged by God is truly small and ignoble and despicable, but only what man arranges. Yet with the Creator the old things can indeed be reckoned as foolishness and weakness and dishonour and pettiness and contempt. What more foolish, what weaker, than God's demand for bloody sacrifices and reeking burnt offerings? What weaker than the purification of vessels and beds? What more dishonourable than the further disfigurement of flesh that already blushes? What so low as the imposing of retaliation? What so contemptible as the exclusion of foods? The whole Old Testament, as far as I know, every heretic ridicules. “For God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise” (Marcion's god does nothing of the kind, since he does not strive to refute opposites by opposites) “so that no flesh should boast,” in order that, as it is written, “Let him who boasts boast in God.” In what God? Surely in the one who gave this command; unless the Creator commanded us to boast in Marcion's god.

So by all these things he shows of which God it is that he speaks the wisdom among the perfect: of him, namely, who took away the wisdom of the wise and brought to nothing the understanding of the prudent, who made foolish the wisdom of the world, choosing its foolish things and appointing them for salvation. This wisdom, he says, was hidden: it lay in things foolish and small and dishonourable, and it lay concealed also under figures, allegories, and riddles, to be revealed afterwards in Christ, who was set as a light of the nations by the Creator, who promised through the voice of Isaiah that he would open up treasures unseen and hidden. For that the god who did nothing at all in which he might be thought to have hidden something should have hidden anything is quite incredible. If he himself existed, he could not stay hidden, much less any mysteries of his. But the Creator is as well known himself as his mysteries are, which ran their course openly in Israel, yet were overshadowed as to their meanings, and in them the wisdom of God lay hidden: to be told among the perfect in its own time, but set forth in God's purpose before the ages. And whose are the ages, if not the Creator's? For if the ages are built of times, and times are put together from days and months and years, and days and months and years are marked by the Creator's suns and moons and stars, set by him for this purpose (“and they shall be,” he says, “for signs of months and years”), it is plain that the ages too are the Creator's, and that whatever is said to have been purposed before the ages belongs to no other than him whose the ages are. Or let Marcion prove that the ages belong to his god; let him also show the world itself in which ages may be reckoned, the vessel, so to speak, of the times, and some signs or instruments of them. If he shows nothing, I return to say this too: why did he purpose our glory before the Creator's ages? It might seem that he had purposed it before the ages if he had revealed it at the beginning of the age. But since he does so when almost the whole of the Creator's ages has already run out, he purposed it before the ages to no purpose, and not rather within the ages, since he was going to reveal it almost after the ages. For it does not belong to one who was slow in revealing to have been in a hurry in purposing. But both suit the Creator: to have purposed before the ages and to have revealed at the end of the ages, because what he both purposed and revealed he prepared in the intervening span of the ages in figures and riddles and allegories. But since he adds about our glory that none of the rulers of this age knew it, and that if they had known it they would never have crucified the Lord of glory, the heretic argues that the rulers of this age crucified the Lord …, that is, the Christ of the other god, so as to lay this too at the door of the Creator. Now, since we have shown above in what ways our glory is to be ascribed to the Creator, it must be taken as settled that the glory which was hidden with the Creator was rightly unknown also to all the Creator's virtues and powers, since not even servants may know their masters' plans, much less those apostate angels and the prince of transgression himself, the devil, whom I would contend were, because of their guilt, all the more strangers to any knowledge of the Creator's arrangements. But it no longer suits me either to take the rulers of this age as the Creator's virtues and powers, because the apostle ascribes ignorance to them. For even the devil, according to our Gospel too, recognized Jesus in the temptation; and according to the common document the evil spirit knew that he was the Holy One of God and was called Jesus and had come to destroy them. Also the parable of that strong armed man, whom another, stronger man overpowered and whose goods he seized, …: if in Marcion's reading it is taken of the Creator, then the Creator could no longer have been ignorant of the Lord of glory while he was being overpowered by him, nor could he have fixed on a cross the one against whom he had no strength. And it remains (credible enough on my view) that the Creator's virtues and powers, knowing the Lord of glory, their own Christ, crucified him, with that despair and overflowing malice with which even the most wicked slaves do not hesitate to kill their masters; for it is written in my Gospel that Satan entered into Judas. But according to Marcion, the apostle in this place does not allow ignorance of the Lord of glory to be ascribed to the Creator's powers, since he does not want them understood as the rulers of this age. And if he does not seem to have spoken of spiritual rulers, then he spoke of worldly ones: of the ruling people (not among the nations, of course), of its own rulers, of King Herod, and also of Pilate, and, above him, of the greater power of this age, the Roman authority that presided over them. So, when the arguments of the other side are torn down, our interpretations are built up. But you still want our glory to belong to your god and to have been hidden with him. Then why does both the god and the apostle still lean on the same document? What has he to do everywhere with the sayings of the prophets? “For who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counsellor?” That is Isaiah's. What has he to do, too, with the examples of our God? For when he affirms that he is a wise master builder, we find this meant by the Creator through Isaiah of one who would lay out the divine rule of life: “For I will take away from Judaea,” he says, among other things, “the wise master builder.” And was it not Paul himself who was then marked out, destined to be taken away from Judaea, that is, from Judaism, for the building of Christianity, to lay the one foundation, which is Christ? For of this too the Creator says through the same prophet: “Behold, I am laying in the foundations of Zion a precious stone, held in honour, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” Unless God was professing himself a builder of an earthly work, so as not to be pointing to his Christ, who was to be the foundation of those who believe in him. On this foundation, according as each builds on it doctrine worthy or unworthy, if his work is to be tested by fire, if his reward is to be paid out through fire, it is the Creator's doing, because through fire our superstructure is judged, the superstructure, of course, on his own foundation, that is, on his own Christ. “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” If man (thing and work and image and likeness, flesh from the earth and soul from the breath) is the Creator's, then, if we are not the Creator's temple, Marcion's god dwells wholly in what belongs to another. “If anyone corrupts the temple of God, he will be corrupted,” by the God of the temple, of course. In threatening an avenger he has threatened the Creator. “Be fools, that you may be wise.” Why? “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” With which God? Even if the earlier arguments have settled nothing for us in favour of this sense, it is well that he confirms it here too: “For it is written, ‘He catches the wise in their wickedness,’ and again, ‘The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.’” For on the whole we shall have laid it down that he could not have used any saying of that God whom he ought to be destroying, if he were not teaching in his service. “So,” he says, “let no one boast in man”: and this too is according to the Creator's rule of life: “Wretched is the man who puts his hope in man,” and, “It is better to trust in God than to trust in men”; and so too with boasting.

“And he himself will bring to light the hidden things of darkness”: through Christ, of course, since he promised Christ as a light of the nations and declared himself a lamp searching the reins and hearts. From him too will come praise to each one, from whom also comes the opposite of praise, as from a judge. “Surely,” you say, “here at least he means by ‘the world’ the God of the world, when he says, ‘We have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men’; because if he had meant by ‘the world’ the men of the world, he would not have named men afterwards as well.” No: so that you should not argue in this way, the foresight of the Holy Spirit showed how he had said, “We have become a spectacle to the world”: namely, to the angels who minister to the world and to the men to whom they minister. No doubt a man of such constancy (not to say the Holy Spirit), writing especially to the children whom he had begotten in the gospel, was afraid to name the God of the world freely, when he could not have seemed to preach against him unless he did so openly! I do not argue that the man who had his father's wife displeased him on the basis of the Creator's law (the apostle may have been following the rule of a common and public religion); but when he condemns him to be handed over to Satan, he is the herald of a God who condemns. No matter how he said it, “for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord,” since he has passed judgment both on the destruction of the flesh and on the salvation of the spirit; and in ordering the evil to be removed from their midst, he has recalled a sentence very frequent with the Creator. “Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened.” So the unleavened loaves were figures of us with the Creator. “So too Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed.” Why is Christ the Passover, unless the Passover is a figure of Christ by the likeness of the blood of the saving lamb and of Christ? Why has he clothed us and Christ with images of the Creator's festivals, if they were not ours? And in turning us away from sexual immorality he makes plain the resurrection of the flesh. “The body,” he says, “is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body,” as the temple for God and God for the temple. Will the temple, then, perish for God, and God for the temple? But you see: “He who raised the Lord will also raise us.” He raised him in the body too, because the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And it is well that he piles it up: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” What will the heretic say? That the members of Christ, which are no longer our own, will not rise? “For we have been bought at a great price.” At no price at all, surely, if Christ was a phantom and had no substance of body to pay out for our bodies. So Christ had something with which to redeem us; and if he redeemed these bodies at a great price, bodies into which sexual immorality must not be admitted, as being now members of Christ, not our own, he will surely keep safe for himself what he bought at a great price. How, then, shall we now glorify, how shall we bear God in a body that is to perish? Next he takes up marriage, which Marcion, more rigorous than the apostle, forbids. For the apostle, though he prefers the good of continence, still permits marriage both to be contracted and to be used, and urges that it be kept rather than dissolved. Clearly Christ forbids divorce, while Moses permits it. Marcion, who takes away all sexual union from the faithful (let his catechumens see to themselves), and orders divorce before marriage: whose sentence is he following, Moses' or Christ's? And yet the apostle, when he commands that a wife should not depart from her husband, or, if she departs, should remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband, both permitted divorce, since he did not forbid it altogether, and confirmed marriage, since he first forbade it to be dissolved and, if it happened to be dissolved, wanted it restored. But what reasons does he give for continence? “Because the time is short.” I had thought it was because there was another god in Christ! And yet from him from whom comes the shortening of the time will also come what befits the shortening of the time. No one provides for another's time. You make your god a petty one, Marcion, if the Creator's time hems him in in any respect. Certainly, in prescribing that one must marry only in the Lord, so that no believer should contract marriage with a heathen, he upholds the Creator's law, which everywhere forbids marriages with foreigners. “But even if there are those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth”: it is plain how he said this, not as though they truly were gods, but because there are those who are called gods, though they are not. For he began with idols, being about to discuss things sacrificed to idols: “We know that an idol is nothing.” But even Marcion does not deny that the Creator is God. So the apostle cannot seem to have placed the Creator too among those who are called gods and yet are not, since, even if they had been, still for us there would be one God, the Father, “from whom are all things.” From whom are all things for us, if not from him to whom all things belong? And what are they? You have them in what came before: “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come.” So he makes the Creator the God of all things, from whom come the world and life and death, which cannot belong to another god. From him, then, among all things, comes Christ too. In teaching that each one ought to live by his own labour, he had given examples first of soldiers, shepherds, and farmers; but they lacked divine authority. So he sets against the ungrateful the law of the Creator, which he was destroying (for he had no such law of his own god): “You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain,” he says, and adds: “Is it for oxen that the Lord cares? …even to oxen kind for the sake of men? For it was written for our sake,” he says. So he proved that the law is allegorical with reference to us, and that it pleads for those who live by the gospel; and for that reason that the preachers of the gospel belong to no other than him to whom the law belongs, which provided for them, since he says, “For it was written for our sake.” But he did not want to use the right the law gave, because he preferred to labour without pay. This he referred to his own glory, which he said no one would make void, not to the destruction of the law, which he proved another would use. But look: blind Marcion stumbles on the rock from which our fathers drank in the wilderness. For if that rock was Christ (the Creator's Christ, of course, whose people they were too), to what purpose does he interpret it as a figure of a foreign mystery? Was it not to teach this very thing, that the old things were figures pointing to Christ, who was to be recognized from them? For when he is about to run through the rest of the people's history, he says first: “Now these things were made examples for us.” Tell me: were examples made by the Creator for the men of another god, and an unknown one at that? Or does one god borrow examples from another, and from a rival at that? He frightens me about the very God from whom he is transferring my faith! Will his adversary make me better for him? Now, if I commit the same sins as the people did, am I to suffer the same things or not? If not the same, he sets before me to no purpose fears of what I shall not suffer. But from whom shall I suffer? If from the Creator, what sort of things is it his part to inflict? And how will it be that the jealous God punishes the sinner of his rival rather than, on the contrary, cherishing him? If from that god, well, he does not know how to punish. So this whole argument of the apostle has no ground at all unless it is in keeping with the Creator's rule of life. Finally, in his conclusion he answers his preface: “Now these things happened to them as they did, and were written to admonish us, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” What a Creator, already foreknowing and admonishing Christians who belong to another! I pass over, if anywhere, things like those already dealt with; some I also dispatch briefly. A great argument for another god, the permission of all kinds of food against the law! As if we ourselves did not also confess that the burdens of the law have been set aside, but by the one who imposed them, who promised a renewal; and so he who took away foods has also given back what he granted from the beginning. But if there had been some other god, the destroyer of our God, he would have forbidden his own people nothing more than to live on the provisions of his adversary.

“The head of the man is Christ.” Which Christ? Is he not the man's author? For he used “head” to mean authority, and authority will belong to no one but the author. Of what man, then, is he the head? Surely of the one of whom he goes on to say: “For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image of God.” So if he is the image of the Creator (for the Creator, looking upon Christ, his Word, who was to become man, said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness”), how can I have another head, and not him whose image I am? For since I am the image of the Creator, there is no room in me for another head. And why should a woman have authority over her head? If it is because she was made from the man and for the man, according to the Creator's ordinance, then in this way too the apostle cared for the rule of life of that God from whose ordinance he explains the reasons for the rule. He adds also: “because of the angels.” Which angels, that is, whose? If the Creator's apostate angels, rightly, so that the face which caused them to stumble should bear some mark in a humble dress and a darkening of its beauty; but if because of the angels of the other god, what does he fear, when not even the Marcionites themselves desire women? We have often shown already that heresies are placed by the apostle among evils as an evil, and that those are to be understood as approved who flee heresies as an evil. Likewise we have already proved in the Gospel, from the sacrament of the bread and the cup, the reality of the Lord's body and blood against Marcion's phantom; and that every mention of judgment belongs to the Creator, as God the judge, has been treated in almost the whole work. Now about spiritual gifts. I say that these too were promised to Christ by the Creator …, under that prescription, most just I think, by which the bestowal of a thing is to be believed to belong to no one other than him whose promise of it has been proved. Isaiah declared: “A rod will come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower will rise up from the rod, and the Spirit of God will rest upon him.” Then he lists its kinds: “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and godliness; the spirit of the fear of God will fill him.” For in the figure of the flower he shows Christ, who was to arise from the rod that came from the root of Jesse, that is, from the virgin of the family of David, the son of Jesse; in which Christ the whole substance of the Spirit was to rest, not as though it would come to him afterwards, since he was always the Spirit of God, even before the flesh (so that you should not argue from this that the prophecy belongs to a Christ who, as a mere man, of David's descent alone, would later obtain the spirit of his God); but because from the time he had flowered in the flesh taken from the stock of David, every working of spiritual grace was to rest in him and to cease and come to an end, as far as the Jews were concerned. As the fact itself bears witness, nothing of the Creator's Spirit has breathed among them from then on, now that there has been taken away from Judaea the wise and prudent master builder and counsellor and prophet, so that this is the meaning of “the law and the prophets until John.” Hear now how he declared that the gifts would also come from Christ after he was received into heaven: “He ascended on high,” that is, into heaven; “he led captivity captive,” that is, death or human slavery; “he gave gifts to the sons of men,” that is, bounties, which we call charisms. Elegantly he says “to the sons of men,” not indiscriminately “to men,” showing us the sons of men, that is, of men in the true sense, the apostles. For, he says, “in the gospel I have begotten you,” and, “my children, with whom I am again in labour.” Now too that promise of the Spirit made through Joel has been fulfilled: “In the last times I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh, and their sons and daughters will prophesy; and on my menservants and maidservants I will pour out of my Spirit.” And surely, if the Creator promised the grace of the Spirit for the last days, and Christ, the dispenser of spiritual gifts, appeared in the last days, as the apostle says, “But when the time was fulfilled, God sent his Son,” and again, “For the time is now short,” it is plain from the prediction of the last times too that this grace of the Spirit belongs to the Christ of the one who foretold it. Compare, finally, the kinds listed by the apostle and by Isaiah. “To one,” he says, “is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom”: at once Isaiah too set down the spirit of wisdom. “To another the word of knowledge”: this will be the word of understanding and counsel. “To another faith in the same Spirit”: this will be the spirit of godliness and of the fear of God. “To another the gift of healings, to another of mighty works”: this will be the spirit of might. “To another prophecy, to another the discerning of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues”: this will be the spirit of knowledge. See how the apostle agrees with the prophet both in making the distribution of the one Spirit and in explaining its particular forms. I can say this: the very fact that he likened the unity of the various gifts to the frame of our body with its many and different members shows that the same one is Lord both of the human body and of the Holy Spirit; he who did not want the gifts to have rank against one another in the body of the Spirit, just as he did not set the members in rank against one another in the human body; he who also taught the apostle that love is to be put before all the gifts, by the chief commandment, which Christ too approved: “You shall love the Lord with all your heart and all your strength and all your soul, and your neighbour as yourself.” And if he recalls that it was written in the law that the Creator would speak in other tongues and with other lips, and by this recollection confirms the gift of tongues, here too he cannot seem to have confirmed another's gift by the Creator's prophecy. Likewise, in prescribing silence to women in the church, so that they should not speak merely for the sake of learning (for he has already shown that they too have the right to prophesy, since he puts a veil on the woman even when she prophesies), he takes from the law the authority for subjecting the woman, a law which, to say it once for all, he ought not to have known except to destroy it. But to leave spiritual gifts now, the facts themselves will have to prove which of us claims them rashly for his own God, and whether they can be set against our side, even if the Creator promised them to his own Christ, not yet revealed, as destined for the Jews alone, to have their workings in their own time, in his own Christ, and among his own people. Let Marcion then produce gifts of his god: some prophets, who have spoken, however, not from human sense but from the Spirit of God, who have both foretold things to come and laid bare the secrets of the heart; let him bring out some psalm, some vision, some prayer, provided it is spiritual, in ecstasy, that is, out of one's senses, if any interpretation of a tongue has come with it; let him prove to me also that a woman among them has prophesied, one of those holier great women of his. I will say: if all these things are more readily brought forward by me, and all of them agreeing with the rules and arrangements and disciplines of the Creator, then without doubt the Christ and the Spirit and the apostle will belong to my God. Whoever wants to demand my declaration has it.

Meanwhile the Marcionite will produce nothing of this kind, even to declare to whom the Christ not yet revealed rather belongs: as mine is to be awaited, who was foretold from the beginning, his is not to be, precisely because he was not foretold from the beginning. So we believe better in a Christ to come than the heretic does in any. We must first consider how certain people then denied the resurrection of the dead. Surely in the same way as now; since it is always the resurrection of the flesh that is denied. The soul, in fact, many of the wise, claiming it to be divine, promise will be kept safe, and the common people themselves honour the dead on the assumption by which they are confident that their souls remain. But bodies, it is plain, are destroyed either at once by fire or by wild beasts, or, even when most carefully buried, still by time. So if the apostle beats back those who deny the resurrection, he is surely defending against them what they denied, namely the resurrection of the flesh. There you have the answer in brief. The rest is now more than is needed. For the very phrase “the resurrection of the dead” requires us to uphold the proper meanings of the words “dead” and “resurrection.” Nothing is dead except what has lost the soul by whose power it lived. It is the body that loses the soul and by losing it becomes dead; so the word “dead” suits the body. Further, if the resurrection is of the dead, and the dead is nothing other than the body, the resurrection will be of the body. So too the word “resurrection” claims no other thing than what has fallen. For a thing can be said to “rise” which has not fallen at all, which has always lain before. But to “rise again” belongs only to what has fallen; for it is said to rise again by rising a second time, because it fell. For the syllable “re” always denotes repetition. So we say that the body falls to the earth through death, as the fact itself bears witness from God's law. For it was said to the body, “You are earth, and to earth you shall go.” So what is from earth will go to earth; that falls which will go to earth; that rises again which falls. “Since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection.” Here Christ's body too is shown to me in the word “man,” which consists of a body, as we have often taught. And if we are all made alive in Christ just as we are put to death in Adam, then since in Adam we are put to death in the body, so we must also be made alive in Christ in the body. Otherwise the comparison does not hold, if the making alive in Christ does not meet the putting to death in Adam in the same substance. But he has inserted something more about Christ, which is not to be passed over, for the sake of the present dispute. For the resurrection of the flesh will be all the more proved, the more I show that Christ belongs to that God with whom the resurrection of the flesh is believed. When he says, “For he must reign until he puts his enemies under his feet,” even from this he already proclaims an avenging God, and so the very one who promised this to Christ: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet. The Lord will send forth the rod of your power from Zion, and you will rule in the midst of your enemies.” But I must show that those scriptures belong to my case which the Jews too try to take away from us. They say, in fact, that this psalm was sung of Hezekiah, because he sat at the right hand of the temple and God turned back and destroyed his enemies; and that therefore the rest too, “Before the morning star I begot you from the womb,” fits Hezekiah and Hezekiah's birth. We produce the Gospels (of whose trustworthiness we ought surely by now, in so great a work, to have convinced them to some extent), which declare that the Lord was born by night, so that this is “before the morning star”: both from the star, understood by the Magi, and from the testimony of the angel who announced by night to the shepherds that Christ had at that very moment been born, and from the place of the birth, for one comes to an inn for the night. Perhaps it was also done with a mystical meaning, that Christ was born by night, since he was to be the light of truth in the darkness of ignorance. And God would not have said “I begot you” except to a true son. For although he says of the whole people, “I have begotten sons,” he does not add “from the womb.” And why did he add “from the womb” (so pointlessly, as though anyone doubted that a man was born from the womb) unless because he wanted it to be understood more pointedly of Christ: “I begot you from the womb,” that is, from the womb alone, without the seed of a man, assigning to the flesh what is from the womb, and to the Spirit what is from himself? To this is added: “You are a priest for ever.” But Hezekiah was not a priest, nor for ever, even if he had been one. “According to the order of Melchizedek,” he says. What has Hezekiah to do with Melchizedek, priest of the Most High, and uncircumcised at that, who blessed the circumcised Abraham after receiving the offering of tithes? But the order of Melchizedek will fit Christ, since Christ, the proper and lawful high priest of God, the pontiff of the priesthood of the uncircumcised, then appointed among the nations, by whom he was rather to be received, will, when he comes at the last, deign to acknowledge the circumcision and the race of Abraham with acceptance and blessing. There is also another psalm that begins thus: “O God, give your judgment to the king,” that is, to Christ who is to reign, “and your righteousness to the king's son,” that is, to Christ's people; for his sons are those who are born again in him. But this psalm too is said to be sung of Solomon. Yet will not the things that fit Christ alone be able to teach that the rest too belongs not to Solomon but to Christ? “He will come down,” it says, “like rain upon a fleece, and like drops falling on the earth,” describing his gentle and imperceptible descent from heaven into flesh. But Solomon, even if he came down from somewhere, did not come down like rain, because not from heaven. But I will set out only the simpler points. “He will rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth”: this was given to Christ alone, whereas Solomon ruled over one small Judaea. “All kings will worship him”: whom will all worship, if not Christ? “And all nations will serve him”: whom will all serve, if not Christ? “May his name be for ever”: whose name is eternal, if not Christ's? “His name will endure before the sun”: for before the sun is the Word of God, that is, Christ. “And all the nations will be blessed in him”: in Solomon no nation is blessed, but in Christ every nation is. What now, if this psalm even shows him to be God? “And they will call him blessed; for blessed is the Lord God of Israel, who alone does wonders. Blessed is the name of his glory, and the whole earth will be filled with his glory.” Solomon, on the contrary, I dare say, lost even the glory he had in God, being drawn by a woman all the way into idolatry. And so, since in the middle of the psalm this too is set, “His enemies will lick the dust,” that is, when put under his feet, it will bear on the point for which I brought in this psalm and defended it for my case: to confirm that the one who, according to the Creator's arrangement, will obtain both the glory of the kingdom and the subjection of his enemies is to be believed to be none other than the Creator's Christ.

Let us return now to the resurrection, a subject on which we have given satisfaction elsewhere in a volume of its own, resisting all the heretics; but we do not fail here either, for the sake of those who do not know that little work. “What will they do,” he says, “who are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise?” Let that practice see to itself: the Kalends of February, perhaps, will answer for it, praying for the dead. So do not at once brand the apostle as its new author or its supporter, He mentions it so as to uphold the resurrection of the flesh all the more firmly, inasmuch as those who were being baptized for the dead to no purpose did so out of faith in the resurrection. We have him elsewhere laying down one baptism. So to be dipped “for the dead” is to be dipped for bodies (for we have shown that it is the body that is dead) …: “What will they do who are baptized for bodies, if bodies do not rise?” And so we rightly fix our footing here, since the apostle introduced his second discussion also about the body: “But some will say, ‘How will the dead rise? And with what body will they come?’” For once the resurrection, which was being denied, had been defended, it followed to discuss the quality of the body, which could not be seen. But on that point one should engage with others. For Marcion, who does not admit the resurrection of the flesh at all and promises salvation to the soul alone, makes the question one not of quality but of substance. Moreover, he is most plainly refuted even by what the apostle discusses about the quality of the body for the sake of those who say, “How will the dead rise? And with what body will they come?” For he has already proclaimed that the body will rise, if he has discussed the quality of the body. Then, if he puts forward the examples of a grain of wheat or some such thing, to which God gives a body as he wills; if he says that each seed has its own body, so that there is one flesh of men and another of cattle and birds, and heavenly bodies and earthly ones, and one glory of the sun and another of the moon and another of the stars: does he not point to a fleshly and bodily resurrection, which he commends by fleshly and bodily examples? Does he not also pledge it from that God from whom the examples come? “So also is the resurrection,” he says. How? As a grain is sown a body, the body rises. In short, he called the dissolving of the body into the earth a sowing, because “it is sown in corruption, … in honour, in power.” That to which the one sequence belongs in the dissolving is that to which the other belongs in the resurrection: the body, that is. [As the grain too.] But if you take away from the resurrection the body that you gave to the dissolving, where will the difference in outcome lie? Likewise, if it is sown an animal body and rises a spiritual one: even if the soul or the spirit has some body of its own, so that “animal body” might seem to mean the soul and “spiritual body” the spirit, he does not therefore say that the soul will be spirit in the resurrection, but that the body, which, by being born with the soul and living by the soul, can be called “animal,” will be spiritual, when it rises through the Spirit into eternity. In short, if it is not the soul but the flesh that is sown in corruption, when it is dissolved into the earth, then the animal body will not be the soul but the flesh, which was the animal body, since it is made spiritual from being animal, as he also says below: “It is not the spiritual that is first ….” For this is why he laid a foundation about Christ himself: “The first man Adam became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit”; although the most foolish heretic did not want it so. For he put “the last Lord” in place of “the last Adam,” afraid, of course, that if he kept “the last Adam” we should argue that Christ belongs to the same one, in the last Adam, as the first Adam does. But the forgery shines through. For why is there a first Adam, unless because there is also a last Adam? Things do not stand in order with one another unless they are alike and of the same name or substance or author. For even among different things there can be one that is first and another that is last, but of one author. But if the author is different too, then even though the other can indeed be called last, yet what he brought in is a first, and only “last” if it is like the first; and it is not like the first, because it is not of the same author. In the same way he will be refuted on the word “man.” “The first man,” he says, “was from the ground, earthly; the second, the Lord from heaven.” Why second, if not a man, as the first was? Or is the first a lord too, if the second is? But enough: if in the Gospel he admits Christ as the Son of Man, he will not be able to deny that he is both man and, as man, Adam. What follows also hems him in. For when the apostle says, “As was the one from the earth,” the man, of course, “so are those who are earthly,” men of course, then it follows, “As is the man from heaven, so are the men who are from heaven.” For he could not have set against earthly men anything but heavenly men, so as to distinguish more carefully their state and hope while keeping the name in common. For in state and hope he calls them earthly and heavenly, yet men alike, who according to their end are reckoned either in Adam or in Christ. And so now, to urge them to the heavenly hope, he says, “As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of the heavenly,” referring not to that substance of the resurrection but to the rule of life of the present time. For he says “let us bear,” not “we shall bear”: by way of precept, not of promise, wanting us to walk as he himself walked, and to depart from the image of the earthly, that is, the old man, which is the working of the flesh. In short, what does he add? “For this I say, brothers, that flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God”: that is, the works of flesh and blood, from which he also took away the kingdom of God when writing to the Galatians, since he is accustomed elsewhere too to put the substance for the works of the substance, as when he says that those who are in the flesh cannot please God. For when shall we be able to please God, except while we are in this flesh? There is no other time for working, I think. But if, though placed in the flesh, we flee the works of the flesh, then we shall not be “in the flesh”: not in the sense that we are outside the substance of the flesh, but that we are outside its guilt. And if under the name of flesh we are told to put off the works, not the substance, of the flesh, then under the name of flesh the kingdom of God is denied to the works of the flesh, not to the substance of the flesh. For what is condemned is not that in which evil is done, but what is done. To give poison is a crime; yet the cup in which it is given is not guilty. So too the body is the vessel of fleshly works; but it is the soul that mixes in it the poison of some evil deed. And what sort of thing is it, if the soul, the author of the works of the flesh, is to earn the kingdom of God through the expiation of what it committed in the body, while the body, merely its servant, remains under condemnation? Is the cup to be punished while the poisoner goes free? And yet we do not claim the kingdom of God for the flesh, but the resurrection of its substance, as the door of the kingdom through which it is entered. For resurrection is one thing and the kingdom another. First comes the resurrection, then the kingdom. So we say that the flesh rises, but obtains the kingdom when changed. “For the dead will rise incorrupt” (those, namely, who had been corrupted when their bodies fell into ruin) “and we shall be changed in an atom of time, in the twinkling of an eye. For this corruptible” (the apostle was holding his own flesh, surely, when he said it) “must put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality” (so that the substance may be made fit for the kingdom of God; “for we shall be like the angels”). This will be the change of the flesh, but of flesh raised up. Or if there is to be none, how will it put on incorruption and immortality? So, made something else through the change, it will then obtain the kingdom of God, no longer flesh and blood, but whatever body God has given it. And so the apostle rightly says, “Flesh and blood will not obtain the kingdom of God,” ascribing this to the change that follows the resurrection. And if then will come to pass the word that is written with the Creator, “Where, O death, is your contention? Where, O death, is your sting?” (and this word is the Creator's, through the prophet Hosea), then the thing too, that is, the kingdom, will belong to him whose word comes to pass in the kingdom. Nor does he give thanks to any other God for having granted us to carry off the victory, over death of course, than to him from whom he received the word that mocks death and triumphs over it.

If “God” has become a common word through the fault of human error, since many gods are spoken of and believed in the world, yet “the blessed God of our Lord Jesus Christ” will be understood to be none other than the Creator, who both blessed all things (you have Genesis) and is blessed by all things (you have Daniel). Likewise, even if a barren god can be called “father,” [by no one's name more than the Creator's,] yet the Father of mercies will be the same one who has been called merciful and compassionate and abounding in mercy. You have in Jonah the example of his mercy itself, which he showed to the Ninevites when they entreated him; he was easily moved by the tears of Hezekiah, ready to pardon Ahab, Jezebel's husband, for the blood of Naboth when he begged, and at once indulgent to David when he acknowledged his sin, preferring, of course, the repentance of a sinner to his death, out of the feeling of mercy. If Marcion's god has done or declared anything of this kind, I will acknowledge him as the Father of mercies. But if he ascribes this title to him from the time he was revealed, as though he has been the Father of mercies from the time he set about freeing the human race, then we deny him from the very time from which he is said to have been revealed. For if it were first established that he exists, then something could also be ascribed to him. For what is ascribed is an accident, and accidents are preceded by the showing of the thing itself to which they belong. So one cannot ascribe anything to him whom he shows at the very moment he ascribes something to him; especially since what is ascribed to one who has not first been shown already belongs to another. For he will be all the more denied to exist, the more that by which he is affirmed to exist belongs to one who has already been shown. So too the new covenant will belong to no other than the one who promised it, “not of the letter but of the Spirit”: this will be its newness. In short, the one who had cut the letter on tablets of stone is the same who had also declared of the Spirit, “I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh.” And if “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life,” both belong to him who says, “I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal.” We have already claimed for the Creator a twofold power, both of judge and of good God, killing by the letter through the law and giving life by the Spirit through the gospel. Things that, though different, were already reckoned to belong to one cannot make two gods. He also recalls the veil of Moses, with which he covered his face, which the children of Israel could not look upon. If he does so to uphold the greater brightness of the new covenant, which remains in glory, than that of the old, which was to be done away, this suits my faith too, which puts the gospel above the law. And see whether it does not suit mine more: for something can be put above only where there is also the thing it is put above. But when he says, “But the minds of the world were blunted” (not, of course, of the Creator, but of the people who are in the world; for he says of Israel, “To this day that same veil is upon their heart”), he shows that the veil on Moses' face was then a figure of the veil on the people's heart, because even now Moses is not seen by them with the heart, as he was not then seen with the face. What, then, is still veiled in Moses that concerns Paul, if the Creator's Christ, foretold by Moses, has not yet come? And how (to put it more plainly) are the hearts of the Jews marked as still veiled, if Moses' prophecies, that is, about Christ, in whom they ought to have understood him, have not yet been fulfilled? What does it matter to the apostle of another Christ if the Jews did not understand the mysteries of their own God, unless the veil on their heart meant the blindness by which they had not seen the Christ of Moses? Finally, what follows, “But when he turns to God, the veil will be taken away,” he says properly of the Jew, on whom Moses' veil lies, who, when he passes over to faith in Christ, will understand that Moses preached about Christ. Otherwise, how will the Creator's veil be taken away in the Christ of another god, whose mysteries the Creator could not have veiled, being, of course, things unknown of one unknown? He says, then, that we now, with unveiled face (the face of the heart, of course, which is veiled in the Jews), beholding Christ, are transfigured into the same image from glory, the glory by which Moses too was transfigured by the glory of the Lord, to glory. So, setting out Moses' bodily illumination from his meeting with the Lord and the bodily veil because of the people's weakness, and adding over them the spiritual unveiling and spiritual brightness in Christ (“as from the Lord,” he says, “of the spirits”), he testifies that the whole order of Moses was a figure of Christ, unknown among the Jews but recognized among us. We know that some sentences can admit of ambiguity from the sound of the pronunciation or from the way they are punctuated, when a double possibility arises. Marcion seized on this by reading thus: “in whom the God of this age,” so that, showing the Creator as the God of this age, he might suggest another god of another age. We say, on the contrary, that it should be punctuated thus: “in whom God,” and then, “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers of this age.” “In whom”: in the unbelieving Jews, in whom the gospel is still hidden from some under the veil of Moses. For God had threatened them, who loved him with their lips but whose heart stood far off from him: “With the ear you will hear and not hear, with the eyes you will see and not see,” and, “Unless you believe, you will not understand,” and, “I will take away the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent I will bring to nothing.” And he surely was not threatening these things in order to hide the gospel of an unknown god. So, even if he is the God of this age, yet it is the heart of the unbelievers of this age that he blinds, because they did not of their own accord recognize his Christ, who was to be understood from the Scriptures. And content to have dealt this far with a point that depends on the ambiguity of punctuation, so that it should not profit the adversary, … I could also have passed over this contention altogether. A simpler answer will be at hand: to interpret the god of this age as the devil, who said, as the prophet relates, “I will be like the Most High; I will set my throne in the clouds,” just as the whole superstition of this age has been made over to him, so that he blinds the hearts of unbelievers, and above all of the apostate Marcion. In short, he did not see the conclusion of the sentence that confronts him: “For God, who said that light should shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of his glory in the person of Christ.” Who said, “Let there be light”? And who says to Christ about the enlightening of the world, “I have set you as a light of the nations,” of those, that is, who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death? To whom the Spirit answers in the psalm, out of foresight of the future: “The light of your countenance, O Lord, has been signed upon us.” And the countenance of God is Christ the Lord, which is why the apostle said above, “who is the image of God.” So if Christ is the countenance of the Creator who said, “Let there be light,” then Christ and the apostles and the gospel and the veil and Moses and the whole series, according to the testimony of the conclusion, belong to the Creator, the God of this age; certainly not to the one who never said, “Let there be light.” (Here I pass over another letter too, which we have headed “To the Ephesians” but the heretics “To the Laodiceans.” For it says that the nations should remember that at that time, when they were without Christ, aliens from Israel, without its way of life and the covenants and the hope of the promise, they were also without God in the world, even though it were of the Creator. So if he said that the nations were without God, and their god is the devil, not the Creator, it is plain that the god of this age is to be understood as the one whom the nations received as god, not the Creator, whom they do not know.) And how can it be that the treasure in earthen vessels, that is, in our bodies, should not be held to belong to the same one to whom the vessels also belong? Now if it is to God's glory that so great a treasure is held in earthen vessels, and the earthen vessels are the Creator's, then the glory is the Creator's, whose vessels taste of the surpassing greatness of God's power; and so is the power itself, since it was entrusted to earthen vessels for this reason, that its surpassing greatness might be proved. But it will not then be the glory of another god, and therefore not his power either (rather his disgrace and weakness), whose surpassing greatness earthen vessels, and others' vessels at that, have contained. And if these are the earthen vessels in which he says we suffer so much, in which we even carry about the dying of the Lord, then God is quite ungrateful and unjust if he is not going to raise up this substance too, in which so much is endured for faith in him, in which the death of Christ too is carried about, in which the surpassing greatness of his power is consecrated. For he puts it forward: “that the life of Christ too may be manifested in our body,” just as, that is, his death is carried about in the body. Of what life of Christ, then, is he speaking? Of that by which we now live in him? And how is it that in what follows he urges us not to things visible and temporal but to things invisible and eternal, that is, not to things present but to things to come? And if he is speaking of the future life of Christ, saying that it will appear in the body, he has plainly preached the resurrection of the flesh; saying that our outer man is being corrupted, yet not as by an eternal destruction after death, but by labours and hardships, of which he spoke before, and adding, “and we shall not lose heart.” For in saying that our inner man is being renewed day by day, he shows both here: the corruption of the body from the harassment of trials, and the renewal of the mind from the contemplation of the promises.

… of our earthly dwelling, he does not mean that we have an eternal house, not made with hands, in heaven, in the sense that what is made with hands, being the Creator's, perishes altogether, dissolved after death. For he is plainly treating these things to console the fear of death and the grief at that very dissolution, as is clear also from what follows, when he adds that we groan in this tabernacle of the earthly body, longing to put on over it what is from heaven, “since, having been stripped, we shall not be found naked,” that is, we shall receive back what we have been stripped of, that is, the body. And again: “For we who are in this tabernacle of the body groan, being weighed down, not wishing to be unclothed but to be clothed over.” For here he has spelled out what he touched on briefly in the first letter: “And the dead will rise incorrupt” (those who have already died) “and we shall be changed” (those who will have been found by God here in the flesh). For the former will rise incorrupt, having received back the body, and that whole, so as to be incorrupt from this; and the latter, because of the very last moment of time and as the reward of the harassments of Antichrist, will obtain a short cut past death, but changed, clothed over with what is from heaven rather than stripped of the body. So if these put that heavenly thing on over the body, the dead too will surely receive back the body, over which they too may put on incorruption from heaven, since of them also he says, “This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal immortality.” The former put it on when they have received back the body; the latter put it on over, because they have not lost the body. And so not idly did he say, “not wishing to be unclothed of the body, but to be clothed over,” that is, not wishing to experience death but to be overtaken by life, “that this mortal may be swallowed up by life,” while it is snatched from death by being clothed over with the change. Because he shows that this is better, so that we should not grieve if perhaps we are overtaken by death, he says too that we have from God the pledge of the Spirit, as though given in security for the same hope of being clothed over; and that we are away from the Lord as long as we are in the flesh, and that we ought therefore to think it good rather to be away from the body and to be with the Lord, so that we may even welcome death gladly. And so he says that we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive what he has done through the body, whether good or evil. For if the recompense of deserts is then, how can some be reckoned as already with the Lord? And by naming a judgment seat and the reckoning of good and evil work he both shows a judge who pronounces both sentences and confirms the bodily presence of all. For what was done in the body cannot fail to be judged in the body. For God would be unjust if one were not punished or rewarded in that through which he acted. “If, then, there is any new creation in Christ, the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new”: Isaiah's prophecy has been fulfilled. If also he commands us to cleanse ourselves from the defilement of flesh and blood, it is not the substance … to receive the kingdom of God. If he also means to present the church as a holy virgin to Christ, as a bride to a bridegroom, surely an image cannot be joined to what is hostile to the reality of the thing itself. If he also calls the false apostles deceitful workers who disguise themselves, through hypocrisy, of course, he taxes them as guilty of adulterated conduct, not of adulterated preaching. So the dispute was about the rule of life, not about deity. If Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, this cannot be directed at the Creator. For the Creator, being God and not an angel, would have been said to disguise himself as a god of light, not as an angel; unless he meant by it that Satan whom both we and Marcion know as an angel. (Paradise has its own treatise for every question it raises. Here I shall perhaps wonder whether a god who has no earthly arrangement of his own could have had a paradise of his own; unless he used the Creator's paradise too on sufferance, as he used the world. And yet taking a man up into heaven is a precedent of the Creator's, in Elijah.) But I shall wonder more that the best god, a stranger to striking and to harshness, applied to his own apostle, to buffet him, an angel of Satan, not even his own but the Creator's, and did not grant it when entreated by him three times. So Marcion's god too corrects in the Creator's way, who is jealous of the proud and brings down the mighty from their thrones. Or is he perhaps the very one who gave Satan power even over Job's body, that strength might be proved in weakness? And why does the chastiser of the Galatians still keep to the form of the law, laying down that every word will stand on three witnesses? Why does the preacher of the gentlest god threaten that he will not spare sinners, and even affirm that the very power to act more harshly when present has been given him by the Lord? Deny now, heretic, that your god is feared, whose apostle was feared!

As the little work draws to its close, what comes up again must now be treated briefly, and some things that have come up quite often must be passed over. I am weary of fighting still about the law, when I have so often proved that its giving way offers no argument for a different god in Christ, since it was foretold and promised with the Creator with a view to Christ; although this letter in particular seems to exclude the law most of all. But we have also often shown that a judging God is carried about by the apostle, and in the judge an avenger, and in the avenger the Creator. So here too, when he says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew and to the Greek, because the righteousness of God is revealed in it from faith to faith,” he undoubtedly ascribes both the gospel and salvation to the just God, not to the good god (to speak according to the heretic's distinction), who transfers men from faith in the law to faith in the gospel, his own law, surely, and his own gospel; since he also says that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold down the truth in unrighteousness. The wrath of which God? Surely the Creator's. So the truth too will belong to him to whom the wrath belongs, which is to be revealed to avenge the truth. And by adding, “But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth,” he both proved the wrath itself, from which judgment comes on behalf of the truth, and again confirmed that the truth belongs to the same God whose wrath he proved by proving the judgment. It would be another matter if the Creator, in anger, were avenging the truth of another god held down in unrighteousness. How many pits Marcion has dug in this letter above all, by taking away what he wished, will be plain from the completeness of our own document. For me it is enough to take up what he likewise failed to see should be erased, as his negligences and blind spots. For if God will judge the secrets of men, both of those who sinned under the law and of those who sinned without the law (since these too, even if they do not know the law, yet by nature do what the law requires), then surely that God will judge to whom belong both the law and nature itself, which serves as law for those who do not know the law. And how will he judge? “According to the gospel,” he says, “through Christ.” So both the gospel and Christ belong to him to whom belong both the law and nature, which will be vindicated through the gospel and Christ by God in that judgment of which he spoke above: “according to truth.” So, just as the wrath revealed from heaven to defend these things comes only from the God of wrath, so this sense too, which coheres with the former and in which the Creator's judgment is proclaimed, cannot be referred to another god, who neither judges nor is angry, but to him to whom these things belong, I mean judgment and wrath; and so those things too must be his through which these are to be carried out, the gospel and Christ. And so he inveighs against the transgressors of the law, who teach not to steal and steal themselves, as a man of the God of the law, not as attacking the Creator himself in these ways, who, though he forbade stealing, ordered the fraud on the Egyptians over the gold and silver, just as they twist the other things against him. The apostle, of course, was afraid to abuse openly the God from whom he was not afraid to have departed! And he so attacked the Jews that he threw at them the prophetic rebuke: “Because of you the name of God is blasphemed.” How perverse, then, that he should himself blaspheme the one for whose blaspheming he reproaches the wicked! He also prefers circumcision of the heart to the foreskin. But with the God of the law, too, circumcision of the heart was made, not of the flesh; in the spirit, not in the letter. And if this is Jeremiah's circumcision (“and circumcise the foreskins of your heart”), as it is also Moses' (“and circumcise your hardness of heart”), then the Spirit that circumcises the heart will belong to him to whom the letter that cuts the flesh belongs; and the Jew who is one inwardly will belong to him to whom the Jew who is one outwardly belongs, since the apostle would not have wanted to name as a Jew one who was not a servant of the God of the Jews. Then the law; now the righteousness of God through faith in Christ. What is this distinction? Has your god been serving the Creator's arrangement, granting time to him and to his law? Or does the “then” belong to him to whom the “now” belongs? The law to him to whom faith in Christ belongs? The distinction is one of dispensations, not of gods. He admonishes those who are justified by faith in Christ, not by the law, to have peace with God. With which God? The one whose enemies we never were, or the one against whose law and nature we rebelled? For if peace applies to him with whom there was war, we shall be justified by him as well; and Christ will be his by faith in whom we shall be justified, to whose peace it is fitting that his once-enemies be brought back. “But the law came in,” he says, “that sin might abound.” Why? “That grace,” he says, “might abound all the more.” The grace of which God, if not of him whose the law is too? Unless the Creator inserted the law in order to do business for the grace of another god, and a rival at that, not to say an unknown one; so that, as sin had reigned with him unto death, so grace also might reign in righteousness unto life through Jesus Christ, with his adversary! For this reason, then, the Creator's law had shut up all things under sin, brought the whole world into guilt, and stopped every mouth, so that no one should boast through it, in order that grace might be kept for the glory of Christ, not the Creator's Christ, but Marcion's! Here too I can lay a foundation concerning the substance of Christ, looking ahead to the question that will follow. For he says that we are dead to the law through the body of Christ. So Christ has a body. It may be argued that a body is not straightaway flesh! But whatever substance it may be, since he names the body of one who, he goes on, rose from the dead, no other body can be understood than a body of flesh, to which the law of death was pronounced. But look: he even bears witness to the law and excuses it from being the cause of sin: “What then shall we say? That the law is sin? Far from it!” Blush, Marcion, at the apostle who recoils from accusing the law. “But I did not know sin except through the law.” What high praise of the law from this, that through it sin could not lie hidden! So it was not the law that led astray, but sin, taking occasion from the commandment. Why do you charge against the God of the law what his apostle does not dare to charge against his law? And yet he piles it up: “The law is holy, and its commandment just and good.” If he so reveres the Creator's law, how he could destroy the Creator himself I do not know. Who distinguishes two gods, one just and another good, when he whose commandment is both good and just ought to be believed to be both? And if he also affirms that the law is spiritual, then surely it is prophetic too, surely figurative too. For from here too I ought to establish that Christ was preached in the law figuratively, in such a way that he could have been recognized even by all the Jews.

If the Father sent him in the likeness of sinful flesh, the flesh that was seen in him is not therefore to be called a phantom. For above he ascribed sin to the flesh and made it the law of sin dwelling in his members and opposing the law of the mind. For this reason, then, the Son was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, to redeem the flesh of sin by a like substance, that is, by flesh which was like sinful flesh, though it was not itself sinful. For this too will be God's power: to accomplish salvation in a substance of the same kind. For it would be nothing great if the Spirit of God healed the flesh; but it is great if flesh does so, flesh altogether like sinful flesh in that it is flesh, but not flesh of sin. So the likeness will relate to the title of sin, not to a falsehood of substance. For he would not have added “of sin” if he wanted the likeness to be understood of the substance, so as to deny its reality; he would have put only “of flesh,” not also “of sin.” But since he framed it thus, “of sinful flesh,” he both affirmed the substance, that is, the flesh, and referred the likeness to the fault of the substance, that is, to sin. Suppose now that the likeness is said of the substance: not even so will the reality of the substance be denied. Why then “like,” if real? Because real indeed, but not from seed: like in its state and real, but unlike in its origin. Besides, there is no likeness between contraries. Spirit would not be called a likeness of flesh (since flesh would not admit a likeness of spirit either), but it would be called a phantom, if what was not there was seen. But a thing is called a likeness when what is seen really is; for it is, in being equal to another. A phantom, however, being only a phantom, is not a likeness. Here too, explaining how he does not want us to be in the flesh, though we are in the flesh, namely that we should not be in the works of the flesh, he shows that it was in this sense that he wrote, “Flesh and blood will not obtain the kingdom of God,” condemning not the substance but its works; and these, because they can be avoided by us while we are still placed in the flesh, will belong not to the guilt of the substance but to that of conduct. Again, if the body is indeed dead because of sin (so the death is not of the soul but of the body), but the spirit is life because of righteousness, … to that to which death came because of sin, that is, to the body. For a thing is restored to no one but to him who lost it, and so the resurrection of the dead will be the resurrection of bodies. For he also adds: “He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies.” So he both confirmed the resurrection of the flesh, without which neither can anything be called a body nor anything be understood as mortal, and proved that Christ's substance was bodily; since our mortal bodies will be given life in the same way as he too was raised, and in no other way the same, except because it was in the body. Here too I leap over a very large gap where the text has been cut away; but I seize on the apostle bearing witness to Israel that they have a zeal for God, their own God of course, yet not according to knowledge. “For,” he says, “not knowing God and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to the righteousness of God; for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” Here the heretic's argument will be that the Jews did not know the higher God, since against him they set up their own righteousness, that is, that of their own law, not receiving Christ, the end of the law. Why then does he bear witness to their zeal for their own God, unless he is also reproaching them with ignorance toward that same God, that they were driven indeed by zeal for God but not according to knowledge, not knowing him, that is, since they did not know his arrangements in Christ, who was to bring the law to its completion, and so they defended their own righteousness against him? And so the Creator himself also testifies to their ignorance toward him: “Israel has not known me, and my people has not understood me,” and that they rather set up their own righteousness: “teaching the doctrines and precepts of men”; and that they had also gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ, out of ignorance, of course. So nothing that fits the Creator can be interpreted of another god, since otherwise the apostle would have wrongly taunted the Jews with ignorance toward an unknown god. For what wrong had they done if they were setting up the righteousness of their own God against one whom they did not know? And yet he cries out: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom of God, and how unsearchable are his ways!” Where does this outburst come from? From the recollection, of course, of the Scriptures which he had been unrolling before, from the contemplation of the mysteries which he had set out above concerning faith in Christ coming from the law. If Marcion erased these on purpose, why does his apostle cry out, beholding no riches of God, of a god as poor and needy as one who founded nothing, foretold nothing, in short had nothing, since he came down into another's property? But in fact both the apostle and the riches belong to the Creator, riches once hidden and now unlocked. For so he had promised: “And I will give them hidden treasures; I will open to them things unseen.” From this, then, came the cry, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom of God!” whose treasures now lay open. That is Isaiah's; and so is what follows, from the book of the same prophet: “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor? Who has given to him, and it will be repaid him?” You who have taken so much away from the Scriptures, why did you keep these, as though they too were not the Creator's? Let us see, of course, the precepts of the new god. “Hating what is evil,” he says, “and cleaving to what is good”: is the Creator's precept any different, “Put away the evil from among you,” and, “Turn away from evil and do good”? “Loving one another with brotherly affection”: is this not the same as “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”? “Rejoicing in hope,” in God, of course: “For it is good to hope in the Lord rather than to hope in rulers.” “Enduring affliction”: “For the Lord will hear you in the day of affliction” (you have the psalm). “Bless, and do not curse”: who will teach this better than he who founded all things with blessings? “Not minding high things, but going along with the lowly; do not be wise in your own sight”: for they hear “woe” through Isaiah. “Repay no one evil for evil”: “and do not remember your brother's malice.” “Not avenging yourselves; for vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord.” “Have peace with all men.” So the law's retaliation did not permit repaying an injury, but checked its beginning by the fear of repayment. Rightly, then, he summed up the whole of the Creator's rule of life in his chief precept: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” If this completion of the law comes from the law itself, I no longer know who the God of the law is; I fear it may be Marcion's god! But if the gospel of Christ is fulfilled by this precept, and it is not the Creator's Christ, what are we still contending about? Whether Christ said it or not, “I have not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it,” the man from Pontus labored in vain at denying that saying: if the gospel has not fulfilled the law, then see, the law has fulfilled the gospel. And it is well that at the close he threatens the judgment seat of Christ, surely of a judge and avenger, surely the Creator's, certainly establishing that the one he holds out to be feared is the one whose favour must be won, even if he were preaching another.

It will be no trouble to attend to the shorter letters too. There is flavour even in a little. The Jews had killed their own prophets. I can say: what has that to do with the apostle of another god, and the best god at that, who is said not to condemn even the sins of his own people, and who himself, by destroying those same prophets, in a way kills them? What wrong did Israel commit in his eyes if it killed those whom he too rejected, if it passed a hostile sentence on them before he did? But it sinned against its own God: he will reproach the iniquity to whom the injured party belongs; certainly anyone rather than the adversary of the injured. Nor would he have loaded them with the charge of the Lord's death too, saying that they killed both the Lord and their own prophets (although “their own” is the heretic's addition). For what would be so bitter in their having killed Christ, the preacher of another god, when they had slaughtered the prophets of their own God? But the point of the heightening is that they had killed both the Lord and his servants. In short, if they killed the Christ of one god and the prophets of another, he made the impiety equal; he did not heighten it. But it was not to be made equal; so it could not have been heightened unless both crimes were committed against the same God. So the Christ and the prophets belong to the same God. What sanctification of ours he calls “the will of God” may be recognized from the opposites which he forbids: “to abstain,” he says, from fornication, not from marriage; “that each should know how to possess his own vessel in honour.” How? “Not in lust, as the nations do.” But not even among the nations is lust ascribed to marriage, but to the extravagant, unnatural, and monstrous forms of self-indulgence. It is contrary to every kind of vileness and uncleanness; it does not exclude marriage but lust, and handles our vessel in the honour of marriage. I would treat this passage while keeping the preference for the other, that is, the fuller holiness, setting continence and virginity above marriage, yet without forbidding it. For I am beating back those who destroy the God of marriage, not those who pursue chastity. He says that those who remain until the coming of Christ, together with the dead in Christ, who will rise first, will be caught up in the clouds into the air to meet the Lord. I recognize that the heavenly beings, having already then foreseen these things, marvelled at the Jerusalem that is above itself, and declared through Isaiah: “Who are these who fly hither like clouds, like doves with their young, to me?” If Christ will prepare this ascent for us, he will be the Christ of whom Hosea speaks: “who builds his ascent into the heavens,” for himself, surely, and for his own. From whom, then, shall I now hope for it, if not from him from whom I heard these things? What Spirit does he forbid to be quenched, and what prophecies does he forbid to be despised? Surely not the Creator's Spirit nor the Creator's prophecies, in Marcion's view. For what he destroys he has himself already quenched and made nothing of, and he cannot forbid what he himself has done. So it falls to Marcion to produce today, in his own church, the Spirit of his god, which is not to be quenched, and prophecies which are not to be despised. And if he has produced what he thinks such, let him know that we will challenge whatever it is by the standard of spiritual and prophetic grace and power: that it foretell things to come, reveal the secrets of the heart, and expound mysteries. When he has brought forward and proved nothing of the kind, we will bring forward both the Spirit and the prophecies of the Creator, speaking according to his will. And so it will be clear what the apostle was speaking of: namely, of the things that were to be in the church of that God who, since he exists, also has his Spirit at work and his promise fulfilled. Come now, you who reject the salvation of the flesh, and, whenever the body is named in such a context, interpret it as some other thing, I know not what, rather than the substance of the flesh: how is it that the apostle distinguished all the substances in us by definite names and placed them all under one prayer for salvation, wishing that our “spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord and Saviour Christ”? For he named both soul and body, as two things and as different. For even if the soul too is a body of some quality of its own, as the spirit also is, still, since body and soul are named separately, the soul has its own proper name and does not need the common word “body”; that is left to the flesh, which, not being named by its own name, must use the common one. And indeed I see no other substance in man, after the spirit and the soul, to which the word “body” can be applied, except the flesh; and I understand the flesh under the name “body” whenever it is not named, much more here, when what is called the body is called by its own name.

We are compelled to repeat some things again and again, so as to confirm what hangs together with them. Here too we say that a Lord who repays both kinds of desert is carried about by the apostle: either the Creator or, which Marcion would not want, one like the Creator, with whom it is just to repay affliction to those who afflict us, and to us who are afflicted rest, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus coming from heaven with the angels of his power and in a flame of fire. But the heretic, by deleting “flame” and “fire,” has quenched them, so as not to make him our God. Yet the emptiness of the erasure shines through. For since the apostle writes that the Lord will come to take vengeance on those who do not know God and who do not obey the gospel, who, he says, will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his power, it follows that he brings in a flame of fire, since he is coming to punish. So in this too, against Marcion's will, Christ belongs to the God who burns; and in that other point he belongs to the Creator, in that he also takes vengeance on those who do not know the Lord, that is, on the heathen. For he set apart … those who do not obey the gospel, whether sinful Christians or Jews. Now to exact penalties from the heathen, who may not have known the gospel, is not the part of that god who is by nature unknown and has been revealed nowhere except in the gospel, and so is not knowable by all. But to the Creator even natural knowledge is owed, by understanding him from his works and then seeking a fuller knowledge of him. It belongs, then, to him to punish even those who do not know God, since he may not be ignored. The very words, “from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his power,” which use the words of Isaiah and for the same reason, savour of the same Lord, who rises up to shatter the earth. And who is the man of sin, the son of perdition, who must be revealed before the Lord's coming, exalting himself above everything that is called God and every object of worship, who will sit in the temple of God and boast himself to be God? In our view he is the Antichrist, as the ancient and the new prophecies teach, and as the apostle John teaches, who says that antichrists have already gone out into the world, forerunners of the Antichrist in spirit, denying that Christ has come in the flesh and dissolving Jesus, that is, in God the Creator. But in Marcion's view I do not know, unless he is the Creator's Christ; for in his view the Creator's Christ has not yet come. But whichever of the two he is, I ask why he comes “with all power and signs and lying wonders.” “Because,” he says, “they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved; and for this reason there will be for them an impulse of deceit, so that they believe the lie, that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but consented to iniquity.” So if he is the Antichrist, as on our view, the Creator will be God, who sends him to drive into error those who did not believe the truth so as to be saved; and the truth and salvation will belong to the same one who avenges them by sending error, that is, to the Creator, to whom such jealousy belongs, to deceive by error those whom he did not win by truth. But if he is not the Antichrist, as on our view, then he is the Creator's Christ, as on Marcion's. And how will it be that he sends the Creator's Christ to avenge his own truth? And even if he agrees about the Antichrist, I would say likewise: how is it that Satan, the Creator's angel, is necessary to him, and is killed by him, though he has to perform the working of deceit for the Creator? In sum, if it is beyond doubt that the angel and the truth and the salvation belong to the one to whom the wrath and the jealousy and the sending of deceit against despisers and deserters belong, and even against those who do not know him (so that Marcion too now gives ground and grants that his god too is a jealous God), who will be angry with better right? I think the one who from the beginning of things laid a foundation in nature for the knowledge of himself by works, benefits, plagues, prophecies, and witnesses, and yet was not known; not the one who was brought forward once, by the single document of the gospel, and that itself uncertain and not openly preaching another god. So to whom vengeance belongs, to him will belong the matter of vengeance: I mean the gospel and the truth and salvation. And to command that one who wants to eat should work is the rule of life of him who ordered that the mouth of the ox treading out the grain be left free.

By the truth of the church we hold that this letter was sent to the Ephesians, not to the Laodiceans; but Marcion was once eager to falsify its title too, as though he were a most diligent investigator in this too. But titles do not matter, since the apostle wrote to all when he wrote to some; certainly, however, preaching in Christ that God to whom the things preached belong. To whom, then, will it belong, according to the good pleasure which he purposed in the mystery of his will, for the arrangement of the fulfilment of the times (to put it as the word sounds in Greek), to “recapitulate” (that is, to bring back to the beginning, or to reckon up again from the beginning) all things in Christ, both those in the heavens and those on earth, if not to him to whom all things will belong from the beginning, even the beginning itself, from whom come both the times and the fulfilment of the times and the arrangement of the fulfilment, on account of which all things are reckoned back to the beginning in Christ? But what beginning has the other god, that is, what starting point, when he has no work? What times without a beginning? What fulfilment without times? What arrangement without fulfilment? In short, what did he ever do on earth long ago, that some long arrangement of times to be fulfilled should be reckoned for reckoning up all things in Christ, even those in the heavens? Nor shall we think that the things done in the heavens, whatever they are, were done by any other than the one by whom all agree the things on earth were done. And if it is not possible for all these things to be counted from the beginning as another's than the Creator's, who will believe that they are reckoned up by another into another Christ, and not by their own author into his own Christ? If they are the Creator's, they must be different from the different god; if different, then opposed. How, then, would opposed things be reckoned up into him by whom, in the end, they are destroyed? For what Christ does the sequel announce, when he says, “that we who hoped beforehand in Christ should be to the praise of his glory”? For who could have hoped beforehand, that is, hoped in God before he came, except the Jews, to whom Christ was foretold from the beginning? So he who was foretold was also hoped for beforehand. And so he refers this to himself, that is, to the Jews, in order to make a distinction when he turns to the nations: “in whom you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel, in which you believed, were sealed with his Holy Spirit of promise.” Of what promise? The one made through Joel: “In the last days I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh,” that is, on the nations too. So both the Spirit and the gospel will be in that Christ who was hoped for beforehand while he was being foretold. And the Father of glory is he whose Christ is sung in the psalm as the King of glory ascending: “Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.” From him the spirit of wisdom is prayed for, with whom this kind of spiritual gift too is listed among the seven spirits through Isaiah. He will give enlightened eyes of the heart who also enriched the outward eyes with light, who is displeased at the people's blindness: “And who is blind but my servants?” and, “The servants of God have been blinded.” With him are also the riches of the inheritance among the saints, he who promised that inheritance from the calling of the nations: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance.” He worked his might in Christ by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand, subjecting all things to him, he who also said, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet”; since elsewhere too the Spirit says to the Father of the Son, “You have put all things under his feet.” If from these things, which are recognized in the Creator, another god and another Christ are inferred, let us now look for the Creator. Clearly, I think, we find him when he says that they were dead in the sins in which they had walked according to the age of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, who works in the sons of unbelief. But here too Marcion cannot take “the world” for the God of the world. For the created is not like the Creator, the made like the maker, the world like God. Nor will one who is the prince of the power of the ages be called the prince of the power of the air. For the ruler of higher things is never designated from the lower, even if the lower too are counted as his. Nor can he seem to be the worker of unbelief, which he himself rather suffers from both Jews and nations. It is enough, then, if these things do not fall upon the Creator. But if there is one to whom they apply better, the apostle surely knew this better. Who is he? Without doubt the one who hems in the sons of unbelief against the Creator himself, having taken possession of this air, as the prophet reports him saying: “I will set my throne in the clouds; I will be like the Most High.” This will be the devil, whom elsewhere too, if they want the apostle to be read so, we shall recognize as the god of this age. For so he has filled the whole world with the lie of deity. If he had not existed, these things could indeed have looked toward the Creator. And if the apostle had lived in Judaism, when he interposed about sins, “in which we too all once lived,” he does not thereby give us to understand that the lord of sins and prince of this air is the Creator; but because in Judaism he had been one of the sons of unbelief, with the devil working in him, when he was persecuting the church and the Creator's Christ, for this reason he says, “We were of unbelief.” But “by nature” he says, so that the heretic should not argue that the lord of wrath is the Creator because the Creator called the Jews sons. For when he says, “We were by nature children of wrath” (and the Jews are sons of the Creator not by nature but by his choice of the fathers), he referred the children of wrath to nature, not to the Creator. Finally, adding, “as the others too,” who are surely not sons of God, he plainly reckons sins and the lusts of the flesh and unbelief and wrath to the common nature of all men, the devil, however, laying hold of that nature, which he himself had already infected by sowing the seed of sin. “We are his workmanship,” he says, “created in Christ.” For making is one thing and creating another; but he gave both to one. Man is the workmanship of the Creator: so the same one who made him created him in Christ. As regards substance, he made him; as regards grace, he created him. Look also at what hangs together with this: “Remember that you, once the nations in the flesh, who are called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision in the flesh made by hand, were at that time without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants and their promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” Without what God were the nations, and without what Christ? Surely without him to whom belonged the commonwealth of Israel and the covenants and the promise. “But now,” he says, “in Christ you who were far off have been brought near in his blood.” From what had they been far off before? From what he says above: from the Creator's Christ, from the commonwealth of Israel, from the covenants, from the hope of the promise, from God himself. If this is so, then the nations are now brought near in Christ to those things from which they were then far off. But if we have been brought near in Christ to the commonwealth of Israel, which is in the worship of God the Creator, and to the covenants and the promise and to their very God, it is ridiculous enough that the Christ of another god has brought us from far off to the Creator. The apostle remembered that it had been foretold thus of the calling of the nations, who were to be called from far off: “Those who were far from me have drawn near to my righteousness.” For both the righteousness and the peace of the Creator were announced in Christ, as we have often shown. And so, he says, “He is our peace, who has made both one” (the Jewish, that is, and the Gentile, the near and the far), “having broken down the middle wall of enmity in his flesh.” But Marcion took away “his,” so as to make it “in the flesh” of the enmity, as though the rivalry were with fleshly vice, not with Christ. As I have said elsewhere, so here too, not man of the Marrucini but man of Pontus: why do you deny here the flesh of him whose blood you confessed above? If he made void the law of commandments by his decrees (by fulfilling the law, surely; for “You shall not commit adultery” is now void when it is said, “You shall not even look with lust”; “You shall not kill” is void when it is said, “You shall not even speak evil”; you cannot make a helper of the law into its adversary), “so as to create in himself the two” (he who had made them, creating them too, as also above: “for we are his workmanship, created in Christ”) “into one new man, making peace” (if truly new, then truly a man too, not a phantom; and new, as newly born of a virgin by the Spirit of God), “that he might reconcile both to God” (to the God whom both races had offended, both Jewish and Gentile) “in one body,” he says, “having killed the enmity in it through the cross”: so here too the body in Christ is flesh, which could suffer the cross. So, since he announced peace to those who were near and those who were far off, having together obtained access to the Father, we are no longer strangers and sojourners but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (of him, surely, from whom we showed above that we had been aliens and far off), “built upon the foundation of the apostles.” The heretic took away “and of the prophets,” forgetting that the Lord placed prophets as well as apostles in the church; unless he feared that our building in Christ might also stand on the foundation of the old prophets, since the apostle himself never ceases everywhere to build us up from the prophets. For where did he get the idea of calling Christ the chief cornerstone, if not from the meaning of the psalm: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner”?

Given the heretic's mania for cutting, I do not wonder if he takes away syllables, when he often removes whole pages. The apostle says that grace was given to him, the least of all, to enlighten all, as to what is the arrangement of the mystery hidden from the ages in God, who created all things. The heretic snatched away the preposition “in” and has it read thus: “hidden from the ages from the God who created all things.” But the forgery flashes out. For the apostle goes on: “that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places through the church.” Whose principalities and powers does he mean? If the Creator's, how can it be that that god wanted his wisdom to be shown to the Creator's principalities and powers, but not to the Creator himself? When not even the powers could have learned anything without their own prince? Or if he did not name God here because the prince himself is also counted among them, then he would likewise have declared that the mystery was hidden from the principalities and powers of him who created all things, counting him among them in the same way. And if he says it was hidden from him, he ought to have said that it was made manifest to him. So it was not hidden from God, but hidden in God, the Creator of all, and hidden from his principalities and powers. “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor?” Caught here, the heretic will perhaps change his ground and say that his god wanted to make known to his own powers and principalities the arrangement of his mystery, of which God, the Creator of all, had been ignorant. And what was the point of pleading the ignorance of the Creator, a stranger separated from him by a long distance, when even the household of the higher god had not known it? Yet the future event was known to the Creator too. Or was it not surely known to him, since it was to be revealed under his heaven and on his earth? So from this too what we built up above is confirmed. For if the Creator was one day to know that hidden mystery of the higher god, and the text ran, “hidden from the God who created all things,” he ought to have gone on thus: “that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to him,” and then, “and to the powers and principalities of whatever god,” with whom the Creator would come to know it. So it is clear that something was removed, which in this way is kept safe for its truth. I too now want to join issue with you over the apostle's allegories, whose forms you will not allow to have been in the prophets. “He led captivity captive,” he says. With what arms? In what battles? By laying waste what nation? By overthrowing what city? What women, what children, what petty kings did the victor put in chains? For when in David Christ is sung as girded with a sword upon his thigh, or in Isaiah as taking the spoils of Samaria and the strength of Damascus, you hammer him out into a real and visible warrior. Recognize, then, now both his armour and his warfare as spiritual, if you have now learned that the captivity is spiritual, so that you may recognize this too as his; or because the apostle took the mention of this captivity from the prophets, from whom he also took the commands: “Putting away lying, speak the truth, each to his neighbour,” and, “Be angry, and do not sin” (to set out the psalm's sense in the psalm's own words); “Do not let the sun go down on your anger”; “Do not take part in the works of darkness” (for “with the righteous you will be righteous, and with the perverse you will be perverted,” and, “Remove the evil from your midst,” and, “Go out from among them and touch nothing unclean; be separate, you who carry the vessels of the Lord”). So too, to be drunk with wine, a disgrace, comes from where those who make the saints drunk are rebuked: “And you gave my holy ones wine to drink,” which Aaron and his sons were forbidden to drink when they went into the holy place. And to teach that they should sing to God in psalms and hymns belongs to him who knew that those who drink wine to the sound of timbrels and harps were rather accused by God. So the one whose precepts I find, and the seeds or the growth of those precepts, is the one whose apostle I recognize. Further, from where does he confirm that wives ought to be subject to their husbands? “Because the husband,” he says, “is the head of the wife.” Tell me, Marcion, does your god build up the authority of his law from the Creator's work? That is plainly a smaller matter, since he takes from there the standing of his Christ himself and of his church: “as Christ too is the head of the church.” Likewise when he says, “He who loves his wife loves his own flesh, as Christ too loves the church,” you see your Christ and your church compared to the Creator's work. What honour is given to the flesh under the name of the church! “No one,” he says, “hates his own flesh” (except, plainly, Marcion alone), “but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church.” But you, who alone hate it, taking away its resurrection, will have to hate the church too, since it is loved by Christ in the same way. Indeed Christ loved the flesh as he did the church. No one will fail to love even the image of his bride; rather he will keep it and honour it and crown it. The likeness shares the honour with the reality. Shall I labour now to prove that the same God is God of the man and of Christ, of the woman and of the church, of the flesh and of the spirit, when the apostle himself brings in the Creator's sentence, and even expounds it: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and the two will be in one flesh. This mystery is great”? It is enough for now that, if these mysteries of the Creator are great with the apostle, they are very small with the heretics. “But I,” he says, “speak of Christ and the church.” You have an interpretation of the mystery, not a separation from it. He shows that a figure of the mystery was provided beforehand by the one to whom the mystery surely belonged. What does Marcion think? The Creator could not provide figures beforehand for an unknown god, and not for a known one either, being his adversary; and the higher god ought not to borrow anything from the lower, still less from one he was to destroy. “Children, obey your parents”: for (although Marcion took away “for this is the first commandment with a promise”) the law says, “Honour your father and mother.” “And parents, bring up your children in the discipline and correction of the Lord”: for you have heard that it was said to those of old too, “You shall tell these things in the ears of your children, and your children likewise in the ears of their children.” Why do I now need two gods, if the rule of life is one? And if there are two, I will follow the one who taught first. “But our struggle is against the rulers of the world”: oh, how many creator gods there are now! For why should not a single ruler of the world have been named, if he meant the Creator, to whom the powers he mentioned before would belong? Moreover, since above he bids us put on the armour in which to stand against the schemes of the devil, he now shows that what he joins to the devil belongs to the devil: the powers and the rulers of this darkness, which we too ascribe to the devil. Or if the devil is the Creator, who will be the devil with the Creator? Or are there, as two gods, so also two devils, and powers and world rulers in the plural? But how are the Creator and the devil and God the same, when the devil is not at the same time both God and devil? For either both are gods, if both are devils; or he who is God is not also the devil, just as the devil is not God. I ask about the very word “devil”: from what slander does it fit the Creator? Perhaps he slandered some purpose of the higher god, as he himself suffered at the hands of the archangel, and a lying one at that. For he had not forbidden the tasting of that little tree so that they should not become gods, but so that they should not die of the transgression. Nor will “the spiritual forces of wickedness” mean the Creator because he added “in the heavenly places.” For the apostle knew that spiritual forces of wickedness had worked in the heavenly places, the angels who were made to stumble over the daughters of men. And what sort of thing would it be for him to censure the Creator through ambiguities and riddles of some kind, he who, already placed in chains [for the freedom of his preaching], was surely showing the church the boldness to make known the mystery in the opening of his mouth, which he bade them ask of God for him?

In my prescription against all heresies I usually fix a short way from the testimony of times, claiming that our rule is earlier than every later heresy. The apostle will now prove this too, when he says: “because of the hope laid up in heaven, which you heard in the word of the truth of the gospel, which has come to you as it has into the whole world.” For if already then the gospel tradition had spread everywhere, how much more now? Further, if it is ours that has spread everywhere, more than any heretical one, let alone that of Marcion of the Antonine age, ours will be the apostolic one. And even when Marcion's has filled the whole world, not even then will it be able to defend itself as apostolic. For even so the apostolic one will be established to be that which first filled the world, the gospel, namely, of that God who also sang of its preachings: “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” He calls Christ the image of the invisible God. But we too say that the Father of Christ is invisible, knowing that it was always the Son who was seen in former times, if he was seen by any, in the name of God, as his image; so let him not tear from this too some distinction between a visible and an invisible god, when it has long been the definition of our God: “No one will see the Lord and live.” If Christ is not the firstborn of creation, as the Word of the Creator, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made; if all things were not created in him, in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; if all things were not created through him and in him (for these things ought to have displeased Marcion), the apostle would surely not have put so baldly: “And he is before all.” For how is he before all, if not before all things? How before all things, if not the firstborn of creation, if not the Word of the Creator? And how will he be proved to have been before all who appeared after all? Who knows that he was earlier, whom he did not know to exist? Again, how did it please him that all the fullness should dwell in himself? For first, what is this fullness, unless it consists of those things which Marcion has cut away, created in Christ in the heavens and on earth, angels and men; unless of those things invisible and visible; unless of thrones and dominions and principalities and powers? Or if our false apostles and Jewish preachers of the gospel brought these in of their own, let Marcion produce the fullness of his god, who created nothing. Besides, how can it be that the rival and destroyer of the Creator wanted the Creator's fullness to dwell in his own Christ? To whom, finally, does he reconcile all things in himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, if not to him whom all things had offended, against whom they had rebelled by transgression, to whom they had lately belonged? For they could be conciliated to a stranger; but they could be reconciled to none but their own. So too us, once alienated and enemies in mind in evil works, he brings back into favour with the Creator, whom we had offended by worshipping the creation against the Creator. And wherever he calls the church the body of Christ (as here he says that he fills up what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in the flesh for his body, which is the church), he does not therefore transfer the mention of the body entirely away from the substance of the flesh. For above too he says that we are reconciled in his body through death: surely in that body in which he could die, dying through the flesh and not through the church; plainly for the church's sake, exchanging body for body, the fleshly for the spiritual. And when he warns us to beware of subtle speech and philosophy, as an empty seduction which is according to the elements of the world (meaning not according to heaven or earth, but according to worldly letters, and according to tradition, that is, of men of subtle speech and philosophers), it is a long task, and belongs to another work, to show that by this sentence all heresies are condemned, since they all consist of the powers of subtle speech and the rules of philosophy. But let Marcion recognize that the chief boundary of his faith is from the school of Epicurus, bringing in a god who is dull so that he may say he is not to be feared; and that he places matter alongside God the Creator from the porch of the Stoics; denying the resurrection of the flesh, on which likewise no philosophy agrees. Our truth is so far from their cleverness that it dreads to rouse the wrath of God, and trusts that he brought forth all things out of nothing, and promises that he will restore the same flesh, and does not blush that Christ was born from a virgin's womb, while philosophers, heretics, and heathen themselves laugh. “For God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise,” without doubt the God who, in view of this arrangement of his, threatened beforehand that he would destroy the wisdom of the wise. By this simplicity of truth, the opposite of subtle speech and philosophy, we can think nothing perverse. Then, if God gives us life together with Christ, forgiving us our sins, we cannot believe that sins are forgiven by one against whom they were not committed, since he was formerly unknown. Come now, when he says, “Let no one judge you in food and drink, or in respect of a festival or a new moon or a sabbath, which is a shadow of things to come, but the body is Christ's,” what do you think, Marcion? We are no longer discussing the law, except that here too he teaches how it was excluded: by passing from the shadow to the body, that is, from figures to the reality, which is Christ. So the shadow belongs to him to whom the body belongs too; that is, the law belongs to him to whom Christ belongs too. Separate the law to one god and Christ to another, if you can separate any shadow from the body whose shadow it is. Plainly Christ belongs to the law, if he is the body of the shadow. And if he also censures some who said, on the strength of angelic visions, that one must abstain from foods (“do not touch, do not taste”), wanting to walk in humility of mind, not holding fast to the head, he is not therefore attacking the law and Moses, as though Moses had laid down the prohibition of certain foods from angelic superstition. For it is agreed that Moses received the law from God. Finally, this rule of life (“according to the commandments,” he says, “and doctrine of men”) he charged against those who did not hold fast to the head, that is, to him in whom all things are summed up, called back to the beginning, even the distinction of foods. As for the rest of the precepts, being the same, let it be enough to have shown elsewhere how they flowed from the Creator, who, when he foretold that the old things would pass away and that he would make all things new, and commanded, “Break up for yourselves new ground,” was already then teaching us to put off the old man and put on the new.

When he lists the variety of the preaching, that some, from confidence in his bonds, spoke the word more boldly, others through envy and strife, some even for the reputation of their speaking, most out of love, some out of rivalry, and certain ones even out of ill will, preached Christ, here if anywhere was the place to censure the preaching itself for a difference of doctrine, which would have produced so great a variety of minds too. But setting out only the motives of their minds, not differing rules of the mysteries, he affirms that there was one Christ and one God of his, preached with whatever intention; and so he says, “It is nothing to me whether Christ is announced in pretence or in truth,” because one Christ was being announced, whether out of pretence or out of truth of faith. For he related the mention of truth to the faith of the preaching, not to the rule itself, because the rule was one, but the faith of the preachers was, in some, true, that is, simple, and in others over-clever. Since this is so, it is plain that the Christ preached was the one who was always announced. For if another, far different, were being brought in by the apostle, the newness of the thing would have produced a difference. For there would not have been lacking those who would nonetheless interpret the gospel preaching of the Creator's Christ, since even today in all places the greater part hold our view rather than the heretics'. So the apostle would not have kept silent here about marking and rebuking the difference. So, since difference is not even censured, newness is not proved. Plainly the Marcionites think that here too, about the substance of Christ, the apostle supports them, that there was a phantom of flesh in Christ, when he says that, being in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, not the reality, and in the likeness of man, not in a man, and found in fashion as a man, not in substance, that is, not in flesh. As though fashion and likeness and form did not also belong to substance! It is well that elsewhere too he calls Christ the image of the invisible God. Will Christ here too, then, where he places him in the form of God, likewise not be truly God, if he was not truly man either, placed in the form of man? For in both places the reality will have to be excluded, if form and likeness and fashion are claimed for a phantom. But if, in the form and image of God, as Son of the Father, he is truly God, it is already decided that, in the form and image of man, as Son of Man, he was found truly man. For he used “found” with good reason, that is, most certainly a man. For what is found is established to exist. So as he was found God by his power, so was he found man by his flesh, since he would not have declared him subject to death if he had not been placed in a mortal substance. And more is what he added: “even the death of the cross.” For he would not heighten its horror, extolling the courage of the struggle, if he had known it to be imaginary, in a phantom, one who eluded death rather than experienced it, and who did not exercise courage in his passion but put on a show. And what had he formerly counted as gain? What he lists above too: the glory of the flesh in the mark of circumcision, descent as a Hebrew of Hebrews, the title of the tribe of Benjamin, the dignity of a spotless Pharisee. These he now counts as loss for himself: not God, but the stupidity of the Jews. These too he counts as dung, in comparison with the knowledge of Christ, not in rejection of God the Creator, having no longer a righteousness of his own, which is from the law, but that which is through him, that is, through Christ, from God. “So,” you say, “by this distinction the law did not belong to the God of Christ.” Clever enough. Take then something cleverer. When he says, “not that which is from the law, but that which is through him,” he would not have said “through him” of any other than the one whose the law was. “Our citizenship,” he says, “is in heaven.” I recognize the Creator's ancient promise to Abraham: “And I will make your seed like the stars in heaven.” So also “star differs from star in glory.” And if Christ, coming from heaven, will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory, then this body of ours will rise, which is humbled in sufferings and cast down to the earth by the very law of death. For how will it be transformed if it will not exist at all? Or if this was said of those who, overtaken in the flesh at the Lord's coming, are to be changed, what will those do who will rise first? Will they have nothing from which to be transformed? And yet, he says, “together with them we shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord.” If taken up with them, then surely transformed with them too.

To this letter alone its brevity has been of help, so that it escaped Marcion's forging hands. I wonder, however, that, having accepted a letter written to one man, he rejected the two to Timothy and the one to Titus, composed about the order of the church. He was eager, I suppose, to tamper even with the number of the letters. Remember, reader, that we have proved from the apostle too what was treated before, and that we have dispatched here whatever had been postponed to this work; so that you should neither think the repetition here superfluous, by which we have confirmed the earlier matter, nor hold suspect the postponement there, by which we saved these things for their proper time. If you examine the whole little work, you will judge neither that there is redundancy here nor lack of confidence there.