Book 2

The occasion of recasting this little work — what befell the first little book of it we have stated in the preface — has also conferred this upon us: that, in treating again of the two gods against Marcion, we should distinguish for each its own title and volume according to the division of the matter; defining the one god to be altogether non-existent, and defending the other to be worthily God; inasmuch as it so pleased the Pontic to bring in the one and exclude the other. For he could not build up a lie without the demolition of the truth. He had of necessity to undermine the one, that he might rear up what he wished. So builds he who lacks materials of his own. But it had been enough to dispute on this point only: that no god is that one who is brought in over the Creator; so that, the false god being driven off by sure rules which prescribe a single and perfect divinity, no further inquiry might now be made into the true God, who, just as it is established that He exists — even so, while it is not established that another exists — so ought of necessity to be held, of whatever kind, without controversy, to be adored rather than judged, and to be conciliated rather than canvassed, or rather than feared on account of His severity. For what is more necessary for man than care toward the true God, upon whom (so to speak) he had lighted, because there was no other god?

But now God Almighty, the Lord and Founder of the universe, is put to trouble. For this reason only, I suppose: because He has been known from the beginning, because He never lay hid, because He always shone forth — even before Romulus himself, much more before Tiberius. Except that to the heretics alone He is not known, who make trouble for Him, on this account thinking that another god must be presumed, because they can rather find fault with Him whom they grant to exist than deny Him — weighing God by the arbitration of their own sense; just as if a blind man, or one with swimming eyes, should for that reason wish to presume another sun, milder and more wholesome, because he does not see the one he looks at. There is one sun, O man, which tempers this world; and when you think it not, it is best and most useful; and even when to you it is too keen and hostile, or even too sordid and corrupt, it is yet equal to its own reason. If you cannot perceive that reason, then neither could you have borne the rays of any other sun, if there had been one — a greater one, of course. For you who are blind toward an inferior god — what of a loftier one? Nay rather, spare your own weakness, and do not stretch yourself into danger, having a God certain and undoubted, and on this very score sufficiently seen, since you have first beheld Him to be one whom you know not save in the part in which He Himself willed. But God you do not, as one who knows, deny; and as one who knows not, you canvass — nay, even accuse, as though you knew, Him whom, if you knew, you would not accuse, nay, would not even canvass. While you render Him His name, you deny the substance of the name, that is, of the greatness which is called God — not acknowledging it as great as, if man could have known it in every way, it would not be greatness. Isaiah, even then an apostle, foreseeing heretical hearts, says: "Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counsellor? Or whom has He consulted, or who has shown Him the way of understanding and knowledge?" To whom the apostle too agrees: "O the depth of the riches and the wisdom of God! how unsearchable are His judgments" — those of God the judge, of course — "and His ways past finding out" — those of understanding and knowledge, which no one showed Him, unless perchance these censors of divinity, saying, "God ought not to have so done," and, "He ought rather to have done thus" — as though anyone knew the things that are in God, save the Spirit of God. But having the spirit of the world, not acknowledging God through wisdom in the wisdom of God, they seem to themselves wiser in counsel 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 the foolish thing of God wiser than men, and the weak thing of God stronger than men. And so God is then greatest, when to man He is little; and then best, when to man not good; and then most one, when to man He is two or more. But if from the beginning the animal man, not receiving the things that are of the Spirit, esteemed the law of God foolishness — which he therefore neglected to observe, and so, by not having faith, even what he seemed to have was taken from him: the grace of Paradise and the familiarity of God, through which he would have known all the things of God had he obeyed — what wonder, if, given back to his own matter and relegated to the workhouse of the earth that had to be laboured, in the very work bent down and stooping toward the earth, he handed on, to his whole race, the spirit of the world usurped from it — at least to the race that is animal and heretical, not receiving the things that are of God? Or who will doubt that that very transgression of Adam was a heresy, which he admitted by the choice of his own rather than of the divine sentence? Except that Adam never said to his potter, "You did not fashion me prudently." He confessed his seduction. He did not hide his seductress. He was a very raw heretic. He did not obey, yet he did not blaspheme the Creator, nor reproach the Author, whom from his very beginning he had found good and best, and whom — if at all — he had himself made his judge from the beginning.

It will be fitting, then, for those entering upon the examination of the known God — if it be asked in what condition He is known — to begin from His works, which are prior to man; so that His goodness, discovered at once together with Himself, and thence established and prescribed, may suggest to us some sense of understanding how the subsequent ordering of things turned out. But the disciples of Marcion, recognizing the goodness of our God, are able to acknowledge it as worthy of God by the very same titles by which we have shown it unworthy in their god. For this very thing — that there is matter for His being recognized — He found not with another, but made of His own for Himself. The first goodness of the Creator, finally, is that whereby God willed not to lie hid for ever, that is, that there should be something to which God might be known. For what is so good as the knowledge and the fruit of God? For even though it did not yet appear that this was good, since there was not yet anything to which it might appear, yet God foreknew what good was going to appear, and therefore committed it to His own supreme goodness, the negotiatress of the good that was to appear — a goodness by no means sudden, nor of a goodness that comes upon Him from outside, nor of a roused emotion, as though to be reckoned from the point at which it began to operate. For if goodness itself constituted the beginning from the point at which it began to operate, it had no beginning itself when it made. But the beginning being made by it, the reckoning of times too was born — those times for distinguishing and marking which the stars and the heavenly luminaries were set in order. "For they shall be," He says, "for seasons and for months and for years." Therefore it had no time before time, which made time; just as it had no beginning before the beginning, which constituted the beginning. And thus, lacking both the order of a beginning and the measure of a time, it will be reckoned of an immense and unending age; nor can it be reputed sudden or come from outside or roused, having nothing from which it could be so reputed — that is, any kind of time — but is to be presumed both eternal and inborn in God and perpetual, and on this score worthy of God; suffusing already herewith the goodness of Marcion's god, which I say is later not only in beginnings and times, but even than the very malice of the Creator — if indeed malice could have been committed by goodness.

Therefore, when the goodness of God Himself had looked forward to man, that he should know God, it added this also to its own heralding: that it first contrived a dwelling for man — a certain vast mass afterwards, and afterwards a greater one too — that in the great, as in the lesser, he might first try himself and make progress, and so be advanced from the good of God, that is, from the great, to His best also, that is, to the greater habitation. To the good work He applies the best minister too, His own Word. "My heart," He says, "has belched forth a good Word." Let Marcion acknowledge from this first that the fruit is best — the best fruit, of course, of the best tree. A most unskilled countryman indeed has grafted good upon a bad stock. But the slip of blasphemy will not avail; it will wither with its own grafter, and so the nature of the good tree will bear witness to itself. Look to the sum: what things the Word brought forth as fruit. "And God said, Let it be, and it was made; and God saw that it was good" — not as though, ignorant of the good, He should not have seen it; but because it was good, therefore, seeing it, He honoured and sealed and discharged the goodness of His works by the dignity of His regard. So too He blessed the things He did well, that the whole God might be commended to you, good both to say and to do. The Word knew not yet how to curse, because not yet how to do ill. We shall see the causes which exacted this too from God. Meanwhile the world consisted of all good things, sufficiently showing beforehand how great a good was being prepared for him for whom this whole was being prepared. Who, finally, was worthy to inhabit the works of God but His own image and likeness? That too goodness wrought — and a more operative goodness — not with an imperial word, but with a familiar hand, with even a coaxing word sent before: "Let us make man after our image and likeness." Goodness spoke, goodness formed man of slime into so great a substance of flesh, built up out of one matter into so many qualities. Goodness breathed in a soul, not dead but living. Goodness set him over all things to be enjoyed and ruled, and even named by him. Goodness yet further added delights to man, that, though possessing the whole world, he might dwell in the more pleasant places, transferred into Paradise, even then from the world into the Church. The same goodness provided a helper too, lest anything should not be good. "For it is not good," He says, "that man be alone." It knew that the sex of Mary, and thereafter of the Church, would profit him. But even the law which you accuse, which you twist into controversies, goodness dispensed, taking thought for man, that he might cleave to God, lest he should seem not so much free as cast off, to be levelled with His servants, the other animals, loosed from God and free out of His disdain; but that man alone might glory, because 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 in by that very rational liberty, subject to Him who had subjected all things to him. To the observing of which law goodness likewise attached counsel: "But on the day on which you eat, you shall die the death." For most kindly did it demonstrate the outcome of transgression, lest ignorance of the danger should aid negligence of obedience. Further, if the reason of imposing the law preceded, there followed also the reason of observing it, so that punishment should be assigned to transgression — which yet He willed not to come to pass who had foretold it beforehand. Acknowledge, then, the goodness of our God, at least thus far, from His good works, from His good blessings, from His indulgences, from His providences, from His laws and forewarnings, good and kind.

From this point, now, to all the questions, O you dogs whom the apostle thrusts out of doors, barking at the God of truth! These are the bones of your argumentations, which you gnaw at. If God is good, and foreknowing of the future, and powerful to avert evil, why did He suffer man — His very image and likeness, nay even His substance (by reason, that is, of the soul's census) — to fall away from obedience to the law into death, encompassed by the devil? For if He is both good, who would not have such a thing come to pass; and foreknowing, who was not ignorant that it would come to pass; and powerful, who was able to drive it off — then by no means would that have come to pass which under these three conditions of the divine majesty could not have come to pass. But if it did come to pass, then on the contrary it is settled that God is to be believed neither good nor foreknowing nor powerful; since, in proportion as no such thing would have come to pass had God been such — that is, good and foreknowing and powerful — in that same proportion it came to pass because God is not such. To these things, the first task is to defend in the Creator those attributes which are called into doubt — goodness, I mean, and foreknowledge and power. And I will not linger over this article, the definition even of Christ Himself going before. The proofs are to be entered upon from works. The works of the Creator testify to both: both His goodness, whereby they are good, as we have shown, and His power, whereby they are so great, and indeed out of nothing. For even if out of some matter, as certain ones will have it, yet by this very fact out of nothing, since they were not that which they are. Finally, even so they are great, since good; even so God is powerful, since all things are His, whence also Almighty. But of foreknowledge what shall I say, which has as many witnesses as it has made prophets? And yet what title to foreknowledge is there in the Author of all, who, in ordering all things, of course foreknew them, and in foreknowing them ordered them? — certainly that very transgression, which, unless He had foreknown, He would not have entrusted the guarding against it under the fear of death. Therefore, if these faculties were in God, before which no evil could or ought to have come upon man, and yet it nonetheless came to pass, let us examine also the condition of man, lest it came to pass rather through him which could not come to pass through God. I find man instituted by God as free and of his own arbitration and of his own power, observing in him no image and likeness of God more than the form of this kind of state. For not by his face and bodily lineaments, so various in the human race, was he expressed after the one God, but in that substance which he drew from God Himself, that is, of a soul answering to the form of God, and he was sealed by the liberty and power of his own arbitration. This state of his the very law also confirmed, then laid down by God. For a law would not be laid down for one who had not in his own power the obedience due to the law; nor again would the threat of death be assigned to transgression, if the contempt of the law were not imputed to man's freedom of arbitration. So too in the later laws of the Creator you will find Him setting before man good and evil, life and death; but also, not otherwise, the whole order of discipline arranged through precepts — God calling away, and threatening, and exhorting — only on the supposition of a man free and voluntary both to obedience and to contempt.

But since from this we are now understood to be building toward this — that man's free power of arbitration is such that what befell him is to be charged not to God but to himself — lest you should from this object that he ought not to have been so instituted, if liberty and the power of arbitration was to prove destructive, this too I will first defend: that he ought to have been so instituted; whereby I may the more strongly commend that he was both so instituted and worthily of God so instituted, the better cause being shown which made him so instituted. The goodness of God and His reason will be patrons of this institution too, conspiring in all things with our God. For neither is reason without goodness reason, nor goodness without reason goodness — unless perchance with Marcion's god there be an irrationally good, as we have shown. It behoved that God be known: this surely is good and rational. It behoved that there be something worthy that should know God: what so worthy could be looked to as the image and likeness of God? And this is good without doubt, and rational. It behoved, therefore, that the image and likeness of God be instituted as of free arbitration and of its own power, in which this very thing should be reckoned the image and likeness of God — the liberty, namely, and power of arbitration; for which thing that substance was fitted to man which should be of this state — the breath, namely, of a God of course free and of His own power. But also, otherwise, what sort of thing was it that man, possessing the whole world, should not in the first place reign by the possession of his own mind — lord of others, slave of himself? You have, then, the goodness of God to acknowledge from His regard, and the reason from His disposition. Let goodness alone now be reckoned, which bestowed so much upon man, that is, liberty of arbitration. Let reason claim something else for itself in this kind of institution. For God alone is good by nature. For He who has what He is without beginning, has it not by institution, but by nature. But man, who is wholly of institution, having a beginning, with the beginning was allotted the form whereby he should be; and so was disposed toward good not by nature, but by institution, not having it of his own to be good — because he was disposed toward good not by nature, but by institution — according to the Institutor of the good, namely the Founder of good things. That man might then have a good now his own, made over to him by God, and that there might be now a property of the good in man and in a manner a nature, liberty and power of arbitration was assigned to him out of institution as a kind of balance-holder of the good made over by God — liberty which should effect the good, as his own, to be now spontaneously rendered by man; since this too the reason of goodness exacted, that it be exercised voluntarily, that is, out of liberty of arbitration, not favouring the institution, not serving it, so that man might at last stand good — if according to institution indeed, yet of his own will, he were now found good, as of a property of nature; and so that, against evil too (for that also of course God foresaw), the man might hold out the stronger, being free, of course, and of his own power; because, if he lacked this right of going to meet the good too not by will but by necessity, he would have been seizable by evil also out of the weakness of servitude, accordingly a slave to evil as to good. Wholly, then, the liberty of arbitration toward either part was granted him, that, as lord of himself, he might steadily go to meet both the good by spontaneously keeping it and the evil by spontaneously shunning it; since otherwise too, man being set under the judgment of God, it behoved to make that judgment just out of the deserts of his arbitration, free, of course. For neither the wage of good nor of evil would be rightly weighed out to him who had been found either good or evil by necessity, not by will. To this end also the law was constituted, not excluding but proving liberty, by obedience spontaneously rendered or transgression spontaneously committed; thus toward either outcome lay open the liberty of arbitration. Therefore, if both the goodness and the reason of God are found about the liberty of arbitration granted to man, it is not fitting, the first definition of goodness and reason being omitted — which must be settled before all treatment — afterward to prejudge from the deeds that God ought not so to have instituted, because the issue turned out otherwise than became God; but, this being discerned, that He ought so to have instituted, the other matters are to be explored, saving what has been discerned. For the rest, it is easy for those who stumble straightway upon man's ruin, before they have inspected his condition, to refer to the Author what happened, because neither has the reason of the Author been examined. In short, both the goodness of God, perceived from the beginning of His works, will persuade that nothing evil could have come from God, and the liberty of man, reconsidered, will show itself rather guilty of what it itself committed.

By this definition all things are saved to God: both the nature of goodness and the reason of disposition and the abundance of foreknowledge and power. Yet you ought to exact of God both supreme gravity and especial fidelity in every institution of His, that you may cease to ask whether anything could have come to pass against God's will. For holding fast the gravity and fidelity of the good God — but a gravity and fidelity to be vindicated by His rational institutions — you will not wonder at this either, that God did not intervene against the things He willed not to come to pass, in order to preserve the things He willed. For if He had once granted man liberty and power of arbitration, and worthily had granted them, as we have shown, surely He had granted them to be enjoyed by the very authority of the institution — to be enjoyed, however, as far as on His own part, according to Himself, that is, according to God, that is, unto good (for who will permit anything against himself?); but, as far as on man's part, according to the motions of man's own liberty (for who does not grant this to him to whom he has once granted the enjoyment of anything — that he enjoy it according to his own mind and arbitration?). It was consequent, therefore, that God should withdraw from the liberty once granted to man, that is, should hold within Himself both His foreknowledge and His foremost power, through which He could have intervened, that man should not fall into danger by undertaking to enjoy his liberty ill. For if He had intervened, He would have rescinded the liberty of arbitration which He had permitted by reason and goodness. Suppose, finally, He had intervened; suppose He had rescinded the liberty of arbitration, while He recalls man from the tree, while He keeps the very circumventing serpent from his meeting with the woman — would not Marcion cry out, "O futile lord, unstable, faithless, rescinding what He instituted! Why had He permitted free arbitration, if He intervenes? Why does He intervene, if He permitted?" Let him choose where he should mark Him with error: in the institution, or in the rescinding. Would He not then rather have seemed deceived out of unforeknowledge of the future, when He had withstood it? And that He had indulged, as though ignorant how it would turn out — who would not say it? But even though He had foreknown that man would use His institution ill, what is so worthy of God as gravity, as fidelity to His institutions, of whatever sort? Man would have seen to it, if he had not well discharged what he had well received, so that he himself should be guilty toward the law which he had been unwilling to obey — not that the Lawgiver Himself should do fraud to His own law, by not allowing what He prescribed to be fulfilled. These things you were most worthily about to plead against the Creator, had He withstood man's free arbitration out of that providence and power which you demand; but now whisper to yourself, on the Creator's behalf, both gravity and patience and fidelity, He having discharged His institutions as both rational and good.

For He had not produced man only that he should live, but not also that he should live rightly — in regard, that is, to God and His law. Therefore He had Himself bestowed on him living indeed, in that He made him into a living soul; but living rightly He had commanded by admonition unto obedience to the law. So He proves man not instituted unto death, who now desires him restored unto life, preferring the sinner's repentance to his death. Therefore, as God led man into the state of life, so man drew upon himself the state of death; and this not through weakness, just as not through ignorance, lest anything be imputed to the Author. For although it was an angel that seduced him, yet he that was seduced was free and of his own power; and the image and likeness of God is stronger than an angel; and the breath of God is nobler than the material spirit of which the angels were composed. "Who makes," He says, "His angels spirits, and His attendants a flame of fire." For He would neither have subjected the universe to man if he were weak, and unfit to have dominion, and not mightier than the angels, to whom He subjected no such thing; so neither would He have imposed the weight of the law, if the law were grievous for a weak man to sustain; nor would He have met with the sentence of death one whom He knew excusable on the score of feebleness; finally, He would not have made man weak by liberty and power of arbitration, but rather by the lack of them. And, what is more, the same man, the same substance of soul, the same state of Adam, is by the same liberty and power of arbitration made today a conqueror over the same devil, when he is administered according to obedience to His laws.

"Yet in some way," you say, "the substance of the Creator is found capable of sin, since the breath of God, that is, the soul, sinned in man; nor can the corruption of the part fail to be referred to the original sum." Toward this the quality of the soul will have to be interpreted. First of all it must be held what the Greek scripture marked, naming a breath, not a spirit. For certain ones, translating from the Greek, not reconsidering the difference nor caring for the propriety of the words, put "spirit" for "breath," and give the heretics occasion of darkening the Spirit of God with sin, that is, God Himself. And the question has now been usurped. Understand therefore that the breath is lesser than the Spirit, even though it comes of the Spirit — like a little breeze of it, yet not the Spirit. For the breeze too is rarer than the wind; and if the breeze be of the wind, yet the wind is not the breeze. The breath may even be called the image of the Spirit. For man too is on that account the image of God, that is, of the Spirit; for God is Spirit. The breath, then, is the image of the Spirit. Further, the image will not in every respect be made equal to the truth. For it is one thing to be according to the truth, another to be the truth itself. So too the breath, since it is the image of the Spirit, cannot so match the image of God that, because the truth — that is, the Spirit, that is, God — is without sin, therefore the breath too — that is, the image — ought not to have admitted sin. In this the image will be less than the truth, and the breath inferior to the Spirit, having those lineaments of God, of course, in that the soul is immortal, in that it is free and of its own arbitration, in that for the most part it is foreknowing, in that it is rational, capable of understanding and knowledge; yet even in these it is the image, and not up to the very force of divinity, so neither up to integrity from sin — because this is yielded to God alone, that is, to the truth, and this alone is not permitted to the image. For just as the image, though it express all the lineaments of the truth, yet lacks the very force, not having motion, so too the soul, the image of the Spirit, could not express its single force, that is, the felicity of not sinning. Otherwise it would not be a soul, but a spirit; nor man, who was allotted a soul, but God. And in other respects too, not everything that shall be of God will be held to be God, that you should demand God and the breath, that is, void of sin, because the breath is of God. For neither, if you blow into a pipe, will you have made the pipe a man, though you blew of your own soul — as God too of His own Spirit. Finally, when the scripture manifestly says that God breathed into the face of man, and that man was made into a living soul, not into a quickening spirit, it separated the soul from the condition of its maker. For the work must of necessity be other than the workman, that is, inferior to the workman. For neither will the jug made by the potter be itself the potter; so neither will the breath made by the Spirit be on that account the Spirit. The very fact that the breath was named "soul" — see whether it has not passed from the condition of a breath into some lower quality. "Therefore," you say, "you have given the soul the weakness denied above." Plainly, when you exact it as equal to God, that is, immune from sin, I call it weak. But when it is challenged to the angel, I must of necessity defend it as stronger — the lord of the universe, whom angels now administer, who is even to judge angels, if he stand fast in the law of God, which at the beginning he willed not. This very thing, then, the breath of God could admit; it could, but ought not. For it had the power, by the slenderness of its substance, in that it is breath, not Spirit; but ought not, by the power of arbitration, in that it is free, not a slave — there standing by, moreover, the demonstration of not sinning, under the threat of dying, by which the slenderness of the substance should be propped, and the liberty of the sentence governed. And so the soul cannot now be seen to have sinned through that which is akin to it with God, that is, through the breath, but through that which was added to the substance, that is, through free arbitration — given indeed by God rationally, but by man driven whither he willed. But if these things are so, all the disposition of God is now cleared from the reproach of evil. For the liberty of arbitration will not throw back its own fault upon Him by whom it was given, but upon him by whom it was not administered as it ought. What evil, then, will you ascribe to the Creator? If man's sin, that will not be God's which is man's; nor is He to be held the author of the sin who is found its forbidder, nay, even its condemner. If death be the evil, death will make odious not its threatener, but its despiser, as its author. For by despising it he wrought it, which surely would not have come to be had he not despised it.

But even if you should transcribe the indictment of evil from man to the devil, as to the instigator of the sin, so as in this way too to direct the fault upon the Creator, as upon the author of the devil — He who makes His angels spirits — then, what was made by God, that is, the angel, will be His who made it; but what was not made by God, that is, the devil, that is, the accuser, it remains that he made himself such, by accusing concerning God, and that falsely: first, that God had forbidden them to eat of every tree; next, as though they would not die if they ate; thirdly, as though God had begrudged them divinity. Whence, then, came the malice of lying and of deceit toward men, and of defamation toward God? From God surely not, who instituted even the angel good out of the form of His good works. Finally, he is published as the wisest of all, before he was the devil — unless wisdom be an evil. And if you unroll the prophecy of Ezekiel, you will easily observe that that angel was as much good by institution as corrupt of his own will. For under the person of the prince of Tyre it is pronounced against 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 you shall say, Thus says the Lord: You are the seal of the likeness" — you who, of course, unsealed the integrity of the image and likeness — "the crown of comeliness" (this as to the most eminent of angels, as to the archangel, as to the wisest of all); "you were born in the delights of the Paradise of your God" — there, namely, where God had made the angels in the second formation of the figure of living creatures. "You were clad with the best 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 fiery stones; you were without blame in your days, from the day you were created, until your hurts were found; out of the multitude of your trafficking you filled your store-rooms, and you sinned" — and the rest, which it is manifest pertain properly to the impeachment of the angel, not of that prince; in that no man was born in the Paradise of God, not even Adam himself, who was rather transferred thither; nor set with the Cherub on the holy mountain of God, that is, in the celestial sublimity, from which the Lord too testifies that Satan fell; nor abode among the fiery stones, among the gemming rays of the burning stars, whence Satan too, like lightning, was cast down. But the very author of sin was denoted under the person of a sinful man: blameless, indeed, in time past, from the day of his creation — created by God unto good, as by a good Creator of blameless creations, and adorned with all angelic glory, and set with God, as one good with the Good; but afterward transferred by himself into evil. "For from the time," he says, "that your hurts appeared" — reckoning to him those hurts whereby, namely, he hurt man cast out of obedience to God — and from that time he sinned from which he sowed the sin; and so thenceforth he plied the multitude of his trafficking, that is, of his malice, namely the census of sins, being himself no less than man instituted of free arbitration, as a spirit. For nothing nigh to Himself would God have ordained otherwise than by liberty of this kind. Yet by even predamning him He testified that he had of his own will gone out of bounds from the form of his institution, by a malice of his own desire conceived; and by measuring out a passage to his operations He carried out the reason of His own goodness, deferring by the same counsel the extinction of the devil as the restitution of man. For to the contest He gave space, that man too, by the same liberty of arbitration by which he had fallen to him, might crush the enemy — proving his own fault, not God's — and so worthily recover salvation through victory; and that the devil might be more bitterly punished by him whom he had crushed, being himself first vanquished; and that God might be found so much the more good, in upholding man, more glorious in Paradise, now about to return from death to the licence of plucking the tree of life.

Therefore, up to man's sin, God was from the beginning only good; from then on, judge and severe, and — what the Marcionites will have — cruel. At once the woman is condemned to bring forth in pains and to serve her husband — she who before, without any saddening, had heard of the increase of the race through blessing: "Increase only, and multiply"; she who had been destined as a help to the male, not for servitude. At once the earth too is cursed — but before blessed. At once thistles and thorns — but before hay and herbs and the fruitful things of the trees. At once sweat and the labour of bread — but before, sustenance free out of every tree, and food secure. From then on man unto the earth — but before, of the earth; from then on unto death — but before, unto life; from then on in skin garments — but before, naked without scruple. Thus the prior goodness of God is according to nature, the later severity according to cause. The one inborn, the other accidental; the one His own, the other applied; the one put forth, the other brought to bear. For neither ought nature to have kept goodness unwrought, nor cause to have let severity escape dissembled. The one God showed to Himself, the other to the matter in hand. Begin now even to arraign the state of judge as akin to evil — you who therefore dreamed up another god, good only, because you cannot a judge; although Him too we have shown to be a judge. Or if not a judge, then certainly a perverse and vain constitutor of a discipline that is not to be vindicated, that is, not judged. But you do not reprobate God as judge, you who prove a god not a judge. Without doubt you will have to accuse justice itself, which furnishes the judge — or even reckon it among the kinds of evil, that is, ascribe injustice among the titles of goodness. For now justice will be an evil, if injustice be a good. Further, when you are forced to pronounce injustice among the worst of things, by the same yoke you are pressed to reckon justice among the best. For nothing is a rival of evil that is not good, just as nothing is a rival of good that is not evil. Therefore, by as much as injustice is evil, by so much is justice good. Nor is goodness only a kind, but the very guardianship of goodness, to be reckoned; because goodness, unless it be governed by justice so as to be just, will not be goodness, if it be unjust. For nothing is good that is unjust; but all is good that is just.

So, if there is a fellowship and conspiracy of goodness and justice, you cannot guard against their separation. With what face will you constitute the diversity of two gods, in the separation reckoning apart a good god and apart a just god? There the good stands fast where also the just. From the beginning, finally, the Creator was as good as just. Both went forth alike. His goodness wrought the world, His justice modulated it — which even then judged that the world must be made of good things, because it 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 water and the lower, between the gathering of the sea and the mass of the dry land, between the greater luminaries and the lesser, the diurnal and the nocturnal, between male and female, between the tree of the knowledge of death and of life, between the world and Paradise, between the water-born and the earth-born animals. All things, as goodness conceived them, so justice distinguished. This whole was disposed and ordered by a judgment. Every situation, condition of the elements, every effect, motion, state, rising, setting of each, are the judgments of the Creator. Do not think Him therefore to be defined a judge from the time evil began, and so cast a shadow over justice from the cause of evil. For by these means we have shown that it came forth together with the goodness that authored all things, so that it too is to be reckoned inborn in God and natural and not come from outside, being found in the Lord the arbitress of His works.

But indeed, when evil afterward broke out, and from then the goodness of God began to deal with an adversary, that same justice of God obtained another business too, namely the directing of goodness now according to a turning-against, so that, its own liberty being set aside, by which God is good even unprompted, it should be weighed according to the deserts of each — offered to the worthy, denied to the unworthy, taken from the ungrateful, accordingly vindicated against all rivals. So all this work of justice is a procuring of goodness; for what by judging it condemns, what by condemning it punishes, what (as you say) it rages against, surely profits the good, not the evil. In short, the fear of judgment confers toward good, not toward evil. For it did not suffice that good be commended of itself, now labouring under an adversary. For even if it be commendable of itself, yet not also conservable, since now assailable through an adversary, unless some force of fearing presided, which should compel even the unwilling to seek and guard the good. For the rest, with so many enticements of evil assailing the good, who would seek that which he might despise with impunity? Who would guard what he might lose without peril? Read the broad and much-more-frequented road of evil: would not all slide down it, if nothing were feared in it? We shudder at the terrible threats of the Creator, and are scarce torn from evil. What, if He threatened nothing? Will you call this justice an evil, which favours not evil? Will you deny this good, which provides for the good? What sort of God would you wish? — such as it would be expedient to prefer, under whom sins might rejoice, whom the devil might mock? Would you judge him a good God who could make man rather more evil by the security of sin? Who is an author of good, but he who is also its exactor? Accordingly, who is a stranger to evil, but he who is also its enemy? Who is its enemy, but he who is also its assailant? Who is its assailant, but he who is also its punisher? So God is wholly good, while He is all things on behalf of good. So, finally, He is almighty, because He is powerful both to help and to harm. It is the lesser thing only to profit, because there is nothing else He could do than profit. From such a god, with what confidence should I hope for good, if this alone he can do? How should I pursue the reward of innocence, if I do not also look for that of guilt? I must of necessity distrust, lest neither part be requited by one who could not avail toward both. So far is justice even the plenitude of divinity itself, exhibiting God perfect both as father and as lord — father by clemency, lord by discipline; father by a coaxing power, lord by a severe one; a father to be loved with piety, a lord to be feared of necessity; to be loved, because He prefers mercy to sacrifice, and to be feared, because He wills not sin; to be loved, because He prefers the sinner's repentance to his death, and to be feared, because He wills not His sinners who now repent no more. Therefore the law defines both: "You shall love God," and, "You shall fear God." The one it set before the obedient, the other before the transgressor.

At all points God meets you: the same striking, but also healing; killing, but also making alive; humbling, but also exalting; creating evils, but also making peace — that from this too I may answer the heretics. For lo, they say, He Himself professes Himself the maker of evils, saying, "I am he who creates evils." For embracing the community of the word, which throws into ambiguity the two kinds of evils — since both sins are called evils and punishments — they will have Him everywhere understood to be the maker of evils, that He may be reported the author of malice. But we, applying a distinction of both forms, separating the evils of sin and the evils of punishment, the evils of fault and the evils of penalty, define for each part its own author: of the evils of sin and fault, the devil; but of the evils of punishment and penalty, God the Creator — so that the one part be reckoned to malice, this other to justice, which creates evil judgments against the evils of sin. Of these evils, then, the Creator professes Himself the author which suit a judge. These indeed are evils to those to whom they are repaid; but in their own name, good, in so far as just, and protective of the good and hostile to sins, and in this order worthy of God. Or prove them unjust, that you may prove them to be reckoned to malice, that is, evils of injustice; for if they belong to justice, they will now be not evils, but goods — evils only to the evil, to whom even goods outright are condemned in place of evils. Establish, then, that it was unjustly that man, the voluntary despiser of the divine law, was given back to that which he willed to lack; unjustly that the malice of that age was smitten by rains and then by fires; unjustly that Egypt — most foul, superstitious, and moreover the persecutor of its guest people — was struck with a tenfold chastisement. He hardened Pharaoh's heart: but he had deserved to be furnished unto destruction, who had already denied God, who had already so many times haughtily shaken off His envoys, who had already added the burden of labour to the people; finally, in that he was an Egyptian, he had long since been guilty before God of the idolatry of his nation, worshipping sooner the ibis and the crocodile than the living God. He spent the people itself too, but an ungrateful one. He sent the bears also against the boys, but disrespectful boys against the prophet.

Discern, then, first the justice of the judge, of which, if the reason be settled, then both the severity, and the things through which the severity runs its course, will be reckoned to reason and justice. And not to linger over many things — assert the rest of the causes too, that you may condemn the sentences; excuse the sins, that you may reprobate the judgments. Do not blame the judge, but convict the bad judge. For even if He exacted the sins of the fathers from the sons, the hardness of the people had compelled such remedies, that, providing even for their posterity, they might obey the divine law. For who does not care more for the salvation of his children than for his own? But also, if the blessing of the fathers was destined for their seed too, while as yet there was no merit of it, why should not the guilt of the fathers too overflow upon the sons? As grace, so also offence — that through the whole race both grace and offence might run on, saving what was afterward to be decreed: that they would not say the fathers had eaten the sour grape and the children's teeth been set on edge; that is, that the father should not take up the sin of the son, nor the son the sin of the father, but each be made guilty of his own sin; so that, after the hardness of the people, the hardness of the law being subdued, justice should now judge not the race, but the persons. Although, if you receive the gospel of truth, you will know to whom that sentence pertains, of Him who renders to the sons the sins of the fathers — namely to those who were of their own accord about to imprecate this sentence upon themselves: "His blood be upon our heads and upon our children's." This, therefore, all the providence of God determined, which it had already heard.

Good, then, is severity too, because it is just, if the judge is good, that is, just. Likewise good are the other things through which the good work of good severity runs on, whether anger or jealousy or fierceness. For all these are owed to severity, as severity is owed to justice. The forwardness of an age that owed reverence had to be vindicated. And so the things that accrue to the judge cannot be reproached to the judge, being themselves blameless, even as the judge. For what, if you say that there ought indeed to be a physician, but accuse his instruments because they cut and cauterize and amputate and bind, when without the instrument of his art the physician cannot be? But accuse the man who cuts ill, who amputates unseasonably, who cauterizes rashly, and so reprehend his instruments too as bad ministries. For it is just the same when you indeed admit God as judge, but destroy the motions and senses through which He judges. We are taught God by the prophets and by Christ, not by the philosophers nor by Epicurus. We who believe that God even acted on earth and took on the humility of human estate for the cause of man's salvation, are far from the opinion of those who will not have God care for anything. Thence comes to the heretics too a definition of this kind: if God is angry and jealous and exalted and exasperated, therefore He will also be corrupted, therefore He will also die. But well it is that it belongs to Christians even to believe God dead, and yet living unto the ages of ages. Most foolish are they who prejudge divine things from human, so that, because in man passions of this kind are held to be of a corruptible condition, therefore in God too they are esteemed of the same state. Discern the substances, and distribute to them their senses, as diverse as the substances exact, although they seem to share in the words. For we read both of the right hand and the eyes and the feet of God, nor yet for that reason will they be compared with human ones because they are partners in the appellation. As great as will be the diversity of the divine body and the human under the same names of members, so great will be the difference also between the divine mind and the human under the same words, albeit, of the senses — senses which corruptibility makes so corruptible in man, as incorruptibility makes them so incorruptible in God by the incorruptibility of the divine substance. Surely you confess God the Creator? "Surely," you say. How then do you esteem anything human in God, and not all divine? Him whom you deny not to be God, you confess not to be human; since by confessing Him God you have already prejudged Him surely diverse from every quality of human conditions. Further, since you equally acknowledge man breathed by God into a living soul, not God by man, it is perverse enough that you should set up human things in God rather than divine in man, and clothe God with the image of man rather than man with the image of God. And so this too is to be reckoned the image of God in man: that the human mind have the same motions and senses which God too has, although not such as God; for, according to the substance, both their state and their issue differ. Finally, their contrary senses — gentleness, I mean, patience, mercy, and the very matrix of these, goodness — why do you presume to be divine? Yet we do not perfectly attain them, because God alone is perfect. So too those other kinds, of anger I mean and exasperation, we do not so happily suffer, because God alone is happy of the property of incorruptibility. For He will be angry, but not be exasperated, but not be imperilled; He will be moved, but not be overturned. He must of necessity bring all to bear for the sake of all: as many senses as causes; both anger toward the wicked, and gall toward the ungrateful, and jealousy toward the proud, and whatever is not expedient for the evil. So too mercy toward the erring, and patience toward those who repent not, and pre-eminence toward the deserving, and whatever the good have need of. All these He suffers in His own manner, in which it becomes Him to suffer — He on whose account man suffers the same in his own manner likewise.

These things, so discerned, show the whole order of God the judge to be the worker — and, that I may say it more worthily, the protector — of that catholic and supreme goodness which, set apart from judicial senses and pure in its own state, the Marcionites will not acknowledge in the same God, raining upon the good and the evil and making His sun to rise upon the just and the unjust — which the other god by no means bestows. For even though this testimony too of Christ against the Creator Marcion dared to erase from the gospel, yet the very world is inscribed with it and is read of by every conscience. And this very patience of the Creator will be unto Marcion's judgment — that patience which awaits the sinner's repentance rather than his death, and prefers mercy to sacrifice, already turning aside the destruction destined for the Ninevites, and lavishing space of life upon Hezekiah's tears, and restoring the state of his kingdom to the tyrant of Babylon feigning repentance: I mean that mercy which both granted to the people the son of Saul who was to die by a vow, and freed David, confessing his sins against the house of Uriah, by pardon, and so often restored Israel itself as often as it judged, so often washed it as often as it rebuked. Not therefore, looking only at the judge, turn aside — turn also to the examples of the best. While you note Him when He avenges, consider Him when He indulges. Weigh leniency against austerity. When you have met with both in the Creator, you will find in Him also that on account of which you believe in another god. Come, finally, to the inspection of His doctrines, disciplines, precepts, and counsels. You will say perhaps that these are determined also by human laws. But before all the Lycurguses and Solons, Moses and God. No posterity but receives from the beginnings. Yet it was not from your god that my Creator learned 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 another's, honour father and mother, and you shall love your neighbour as yourself." To these chief counsels of innocence, chastity, and justice and piety, there accrue also the prescriptions of humanity: when in every seventh year slaves are loosed into liberty; when at the same time the field is spared, yielding place to the needy; when even to the ox that treads out the corn the bonds of his mouth are loosed, unto the fruit of his present labour — that the more easily a humanity, premeditated in cattle, might be schooled toward the refreshment of men.

But what goods of the law shall I defend rather than those which the heresy has coveted? — as the definition of retaliation, demanding eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and bruise for bruise. For it does not savour of a licence for mutually exercising injury, but provides for the wholesale restraining of violence; so that, because to a most hardened and faithless people toward God it would seem long, or even incredible, to await defence from God — to be edicted afterward through the prophet, "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord" — meanwhile the committing of injury, by the fear of the requital straightway to be encountered, might be dug up by the roots; and the licence of retribution be a prohibition of provocation, so that, in this way, the wickedness once heated might cease, while the second, being permitted, terrifies the first, and the first, being terrified, even the second is not committed; whereby otherwise too the fear of retaliation is the easier through the same taste of the suffering. Nothing is more bitter than to suffer that very thing which you did to others. And if the law subtracts something from foods and pronounces unclean certain animals which once were blessed, understand it a counsel for the exercising of continence, and acknowledge the reins imposed upon that gullet which, when it ate the bread of angels, desired the cucumbers and melons of the Egyptians. Acknowledge at the same time the provision made for the companions of the gullet, namely lust and luxury, which mostly grow cold by the chastening of the belly. For the people had eaten and drunk and risen up to play. Accordingly, that the ardour for money too might be partly restrained — in so far as it pleads the necessity of sustenance — the ambition for costly foods was subtracted. Finally, that man might be the more easily fashioned to fast for God, being accustomed to few and inglorious viands, and going to hunger for nothing of the more sumptuous things. The Creator is to be reproached, forsooth, that He took foods rather from His own people than from the more ungrateful Marcionites. Let no one reproach also the burdens of sacrifices and the busy scrupulosities of operations and oblations, as though God desired such things properly for Himself, who so manifestly cries out, "What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?" and, "Who has required these things at your hands?" But let him perceive that diligence of God whereby He willed to bind to His own religion, by offices of this kind, a people prone to idolatry and transgression — by the very things in which the superstition of the world was carried on — that He might call them away from it, commanding things to be done to Himself, as though desiring them, lest they should sin by making images.

But even in the very dealings of life and of human conduct, at home and abroad, even to the care of vessels, He distinguished all things in every way, so that, with these legal disciplines meeting them everywhere, at no moment might they be void of regard toward God. For what should make man blessed, but his will in the law of the Lord? "And in the law of the Lord will he meditate day and night." Which law no hardness of the Author promulgated, but the reason of supreme kindness, taming rather the hardness of the people and chiselling down to obedience a faith raw with laborious offices — that I may touch nothing of the secret significations of the law, spiritual, namely, and prophetic, and figured in almost all its details. For it is enough at present if it simply bound man to God, so that no one ought to reprobate it, save him to whom it is no pleasure to serve God. Toward this benefit — not burden — of the law, to be aided, the same goodness of God ordained also the prophets, teaching things worthy of God: to take away wickednesses from the soul, to learn to do well, to seek out judgment, to judge for the orphan and justify the widow, to love questions, to flee the contact of the wicked, to send away a wife unhurt, to tear up an unjust writ, to break bread to the hungry and bring into your house him that has no roof, to clothe the naked if you see him, and not to despise the household of your own seed; to restrain the tongue from evil, and the lips, that they speak no guile; to turn aside from evil, and to do good; to seek peace and pursue it; to be angry and sin not, that is, not to persevere in anger or to rage; not to go off into the council of the impious, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the pestilent. But where? "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together as one," meditating day and night in the law of the Lord — because it is good, namely, to trust in the Lord rather than to trust in man, and to hope in the Lord rather than to hope in man. For what is the wage with God for man? "And he shall be as a tree that is planted by the outgoings of the waters, which shall give its fruit in its own time, and its leaf shall not fall, and all things whatsoever he does shall prosper for him." But the innocent and pure of heart, who has not received the name of God in vain and has not sworn to his neighbour in guile, he shall receive blessing from the Lord, and mercy from God his Saviour. "For the eyes of the Lord are upon them that fear Him, that hope in His mercy, to deliver their souls from death" — eternal death, of course — "and to nourish them in famine" — the famine, of course, of eternal life. "For many are the afflictions of the just, and out of them all the Lord will deliver them. Precious is the death of His saints in the sight of the Lord. The Lord keeps all their bones: not one of them shall be broken. The Lord will redeem the souls of His servants." These few things, out of so many writings of the Creator, we have brought in; and nothing, I think, is now wanting to the testimony of the best God, since both His precepts of goodness and His promises sufficiently attest it.

But indeed these cuttlefish — under whose figure the law refused that fishy creature too from among foods — when they perceive their own exposure, vomit out from this point the darkness of blasphemy, and so scatter the close-pressed intention of each particular, by tossing about and asserting things that may becloud the shining goodness of the Creator. But even through these murks we will follow their wickedness, and drag into the light the wits of the darkness, which object to the Creator, above all, that fraud and rapine of gold and silver, commanded by Him from the Hebrews against the Egyptians. Come, most unhappy heretic, I appeal to you yourself as arbiter; first take knowledge of both peoples, and so you will judge of the author of the precept. The Egyptians demand back of the Hebrews their vessels of gold and silver. On the contrary, the Hebrews set up counter-claims, alleging that to them too, in the name of the same fathers, out of the same instrument of scripture, the wages of that workhouse-servitude ought to be restored — for the brick-loads carried out, for the cities and villages built. What will you judge, elector of the best god? — that the Hebrews ought to acknowledge fraud, or the Egyptians a compensation? For they say that it was so transacted through legates on both sides, the Egyptians demanding back their vessels, but the Jews claiming back their labours. And yet the Egyptians there renounced the claim of justice as to the vessels. Today, against the Marcionites, the Hebrews allege still more, denying that as compensation it is enough, however much of gold and silver, if the labours of six hundred thousand men through so many years be reckoned even at single coins a day. But which part is greater — of those claiming back vessels, or of those inhabiting villages and cities? Greater therefore the complaint of the Egyptians, or the gratuity of the Hebrews? — so that by the sole judgment of injuries the Hebrews should beat back the Egyptians, free men reduced into a workhouse; so that their scribes should show only their own shoulders, before their benches, mangled with the contumelious atrocity of the lashes? Not by a few platters and cups, of the fewer rich of course in every place, but by the whole faculties of the Egyptians themselves and the contributions of all the common people, He would have pronounced that satisfaction must be made to the Hebrews. Therefore, if the cause of the Hebrews be good, good already is the cause too — that is, the command — of the Creator, who both made the Egyptians, all unknowing, gracious, and discharged His own people, in the strait time of their expedition, with some small solace of a tacit compensation. Plainly He commanded less to be exacted; the Egyptians ought even to have restored their sons to the Hebrews.

So in the rest too you reproach Him with contrarieties of precepts, as fickle and unstable, forbidding work on the sabbath and commanding the ark to be carried round for eight days, that is, even on the sabbath, in the storming of the city of Jericho. For you do not look into the law of the sabbath, which forbids human works, not divine. Inasmuch as, "Six days," He says, "shall you labour, and do all your works; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord your God: you shall not do in it any work." What work? Your own, of course. For it is consequent that He should take away on the sabbath those works which He had above enjoined for six days, your own, that is, human and daily ones. But to carry round the ark can be seen as neither a daily work nor a human one, but a rare and most sacred one, and from God's own precept then, surely divine. What this too signified I would expound, were it not long to spread out the figures of all the Creator's arguments, which perhaps you do not even admit. But it is the greater thing if you be convicted out of the plain matters, by the simplicity of the truth, not by curiosity. As even now there is a sure distinction of the sabbath, forbidding human works, not divine. And therefore he who had gone to gather wood on the sabbath was given over to death. For he had done his own work, forbidden by the law. But they who carried round the ark on the sabbaths did it with impunity. For they had administered not their own work, but God's, namely from His own precept.

Accordingly, in forbidding the likeness too of all things to be made — of all that are in heaven and in earth and in the waters — He showed the causes also, restraining, namely, the substance of blind idolatry. For He subjoins: "You shall not adore them, neither shall you serve them." But the image of the bronze serpent, afterward commanded to Moses by the Lord, pertained not to the title of idolatry, but to the remedying of those who were infested by serpents. And I am silent about the figure of the remedy. So too the Cherubim and Seraphim of gold, fashioned for the model of the ark — surely a simple ornament, fitted to the mercy-seat, having causes far diverse from the condition of idolatry, on account of which the likeness is forbidden — do not seem to clash with the law of forbidden likenesses, not being detected in that state of likeness on account of which the likeness is forbidden. We have spoken of the rational institution of sacrifices, calling away, namely, those offices from idols to God; which, if again He cast out, saying, "What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?", He willed this very thing to be understood, that He had not exacted them properly for Himself. "For I will not drink," He says, "the blood of bulls," because elsewhere too He says, "The eternal God will not hunger nor thirst." For even if He had regard to the oblations of Abel, and smelled the holocausts of Noah with pleasure — what gladness is there either in the entrails of a wether or in the reek of burning victims? But the simple mind, fearing God, of those who offered the things they had from God, both of food and of sweet odour, was reckoned to grace with God — not He requiring the things that were done, but that on account of which they were done, namely for the honour of God. If a client should offer to a rich man or a king who desires nothing some little gift of the meanest kind, will the quantity and quality of the gift bring the rich man and king into contempt, or will the title of the office delight him? But if a client offer him gifts of his own accord, or even commanded, in their due order, and observe the solemnities of the king, yet not out of fidelity, nor with a pure heart, nor full in his other obediences too, is it not consequent that that king or rich man should cry out, "What to me is the multitude of your gifts? I am full of them. And your solemnities and feast days and your sabbaths" — calling those "yours" which they had now made their own, not God's, having celebrated them according to their own caprice, not according to the religion of God: by this He demonstrated a refusal conditional therefore and rational of the things He had prescribed to be administered.

But if you will have Him understood as fickle even about persons — when He sometimes reprobates the approved, or improvident when He sometimes approves the reprobate, as though He either condemned His own past judgments or were ignorant of those to come — yet nothing so suits a good judge as both to reject and to accept according to present deserts. Saul is accepted, but while not yet a despiser of the prophet Samuel. Solomon is rejected, but when already possessed by strange women and made over to the idols of the Moabites and Sidonians. What should the Creator do, that He might not be reproached by the Marcionites? Should He pre-condemn men still acting well, on account of future sins? But it was not of a good god to pre-condemn those not yet deserving it. Accordingly, should He not refuse those now sinning, on account of their former well-doings? But it was not of a just judge to remit crimes, their former good deeds being now rescinded. Or what man is there without sin, that God should always accept him whom He could never refuse? Or who again is without some good work, that God should always refuse him whom He could never accept? Exhibit good always, and you will not be refused; exhibit evil always, and you will never be accepted. For the rest, if the same man, as in either case according to the times, is in either case discharged by God both good and judge, who turns His sentences not from fickleness or improvidence, but by a most weighty and most provident censure dispenses the merits of each time.

So too you wrongly interpret repentance in Him, as though accordingly out of fickleness or improvidence — nay, now out of the recollection of a sin — He repents; since indeed He said, "It repents me that I made Saul king," prescribing, namely, that repentance savours of the confession of some evil work or error. But not always. For the confession of repentance comes to pass even in good deeds, unto the upbraiding and reproach of him who has shown himself ungrateful for a benefit; as also then it is announced by the Creator concerning the person of Saul, who was to be honoured — He who had not sinned when He took Saul into the kingdom and increased him with the Holy Spirit; for, being still the best — "such as," it says, "there was not among the sons of Israel" — He had most worthily accepted him. Yet neither had He been ignorant that it would so turn out. For no one will endure you ascribing improvidence to Him whom, not denying Him God, you confess also provident. For this divinity is His own and established. But Saul's evil deed, as I said, He burdened with the profession of His repentance — which, since the sin is absent in the case of Saul's acceptance, it is consequent to understand as upbraiding rather than criminating. "Behold," you say, "I observe it as criminating in the case of the Ninevites, the scripture of Jonah saying, And the Lord repented of the malice which He had said He would do to them, and did it not." As also Jonah himself to the Lord: "Therefore I made haste to flee away to Tarshish, because I knew that you are merciful and pitying, patient and of much mercy, and repenting of malices." Well, then, that he set forth first the title of the best God — most patient, namely, toward the evil, and most abounding in mercy and pity toward those who acknowledge and bewail their sins, such as the Ninevites then were. For if He is best who is such, you ought first to have yielded this point — that there does not suit such a one, that is, the best, even a meeting with malice. And because Marcion too maintains that the good tree may not produce evil fruits either, yet named malice, which the best does not admit — is there not some interpretation underlying for the understanding of those malices too which may have run even unto the best? But it underlies. We say, finally, that "malice" is now signified, not that which is reduced to the nature of the Creator, as of an evil one, but that which is reduced to His power, as of a judge; according to which He should pronounce, "I am he who creates evils," and, "Behold, I send upon you evils" — not sinful, but avenging, the infamy of which we have sufficiently washed away as suiting a judge. But just as, although they be called evils, they are not reproached in a judge, nor on this their own name show the judge to be evil, so too this malice will now have to be understood which, reckoned out of those judicial evils, suits the judge together with them. For with the Greeks too "malices" are sometimes put for vexations and hurts, not for malignities, as also in this article. And so, if the Creator repented of that malice, namely of a creature to be reprobated and to be vindicated upon for sin, yet here too no criminal admission will be reckoned to the Creator, who had worthily and deservedly decreed that a most iniquitous city should be abolished. So what He had justly destined, not destining ill, He had destined out of justice, not out of malice; but the punishment itself He named "malice" out of the evil and deserving of the very suffering of it. "Therefore," you will say, "if you excuse the malice under the name of justice — because He had justly destined destruction upon the Ninevites — even so He is to be blamed, who exercised a repentance of a justice surely not to be repented of." Nay, neither of justice, I say, will God repent; and it remains now to acknowledge what the repentance of God is. For not if a man repents, mostly out of the recollection of a sin, and sometimes out of the thanklessness of some good work, is therefore God so too. For in so far as God neither admits evil nor condemns good, in so far neither is there a place of repentance of good or evil with Him. For this too the same scripture determines for you, Samuel saying to Saul: "The Lord has cut away the kingdom of Israel from your hand this day, and will give it to your neighbour, better than you; and Israel shall be rent in two parts, and shall not turn nor do repentance, because He is not as a man, to repent." This definition, then, in all cases sets up another form of divine repentance, which is to be reckoned neither out of improvidence nor out of fickleness nor out of any condemnation of a good or evil work, as the human is. What then will be the manner of divine repentance? It already shines forth, if you refer it not to human conditions. For nothing else will be understood than a simple turning of a former sentence, which may be admitted even without reprehension of him — even in man, much more in God, whose every sentence is free of fault. For even in the Greek sound the name of "repentance" is composed not of the confession of a sin, but of a change of mind, which with God we have shown to be governed for the meeting of varying matters.

Now then, that I may dispatch all things of this kind, I will press on to interpret and clear the other littlenesses and weaknesses and incongruities, as you reckon them. God cries out, "Adam, where are you?" — being ignorant, forsooth, where he was; and, alleging the shame of nakedness, He asks whether he had tasted of the tree — being uncertain, forsooth. Nay, neither uncertain of the deed nor ignorant of the place. For indeed it behoved that the man, lurking in the consciousness of his sin, being summoned, should come forth into the sight of the Lord, not by the mere outcry of his name, but with some impeaching now of the deed admitted. For it is not in the simple manner, that is, in an interrogatory tone, that we are to read, "Where are you, Adam?", but in one impressed and dashed in and imputative: "Adam, where are you?" — that is, you are in perdition, that is, you are no longer here; so that the voice may be the issue both of one rebuking and of one grieving. For the rest, would some portion of Paradise have escaped the eyes of Him who grasps the whole world in His hand like a nest, whose throne is heaven and the earth His footstool, so that Adam was anywhere too hidden from Him to be seen, before being summoned, as taking of the forbidden fruit? The watcher of your vineyard or garden is not hidden from by the wolf or the little thief. God, I think, more keen-eyed from the higher places, cannot let anything below pass Him by. Foolish you, who turn so great an argument of divine majesty and human instruction to a sneer. God asked as though uncertain, that here too, proving man free of arbitration in the matter of either denial or confession, He might give him room of his own accord to confess the sin, and on this score to be relieved. As of Cain He inquires where his brother is — as though He had not already heard the blood of Abel crying out from the earth; but that he too might have the power, out of the same power of arbitration, of his own accord to deny the sin, and on this score to be aggravated; and so that examples might be laid up for us of sins rather to be confessed than denied; that even then the evangelical doctrine might be initiated, "By your mouth you shall be justified, and by your mouth you shall be condemned." For even though Adam, by reason of the state of the law, was given over to death, yet hope is saved for him, the Lord saying, "Behold, Adam is become as one of us" — concerning, namely, the future acceptance of man into divinity. Finally, what follows? "And now, lest at any time he stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and live for ever." For by interposing "and now," a word of present time, He showed that He had made a delay of life temporal and unto the present. And therefore He did not curse Adam himself and Eve, as candidates of restitution, as relieved by confession. But Cain He both cursed, and forbade — though desirous to atone for his sin by death — to die for the present, as one burdened, beyond his deed, also by the denial of it. This will be the ignorance of our God, which was therefore feigned, lest the sinning man should be ignorant what he ought to do. But descending to Sodom and Gomorrah, He says, "I will see whether they are consummated according to the cry that comes to me; but if not, that I may know." And here, forsooth, uncertain out of ignorance and desirous to know? Or is this sound of the pronouncement necessary, expressing not a doubting but a threatening sense, under the pretext of an inquiry? But if you mock the descent of God too, as though He could not otherwise have completed the judgment unless He had descended, see that you do not equally batter your own god. For he too descended, that he might effect what he willed.

But God even swears. Perhaps by Marcion's god? Nay, He says — much more vainly — by Himself. What would He have wished to do, if there were no other god in His consciousness, than this very thing, while swearing, that there is altogether no other besides Himself? Do you then catch Him perjuring Himself, or swearing in vain? But He cannot be seen to have perjured Himself who knew not another to exist, as you say. For what He knows, that swearing truly He did not forswear. But neither did He swear in vain that no other god exists. For then would He swear in vain, if there were none who believed in other gods — then, indeed, the worshippers of images, but now also the heretics. He swears, therefore, by Himself, that, even to a swearing God, you may believe there is altogether no other god. That God should do this, you too, Marcion, compelled Him. For even then you were foreseen. Accordingly, if He also swears in His promises or threats, wringing out a faith hard in the beginnings, it is nothing unworthy of God to make one believe God by what He does. Little enough, even then, is the god in his very fierceness, when, made savage against the people for the consecration of the calf, He demands of His own servant Moses, "Let me alone, and in my indignation I will destroy them in anger, and I will make you into a great nation." Whence you are wont to affirm Moses better than his god, the deprecator, nay even the forbidder, of the anger. "For you shall not do this," he says, "or expend me too together with them." Pitiable you too, with the people, who do not acknowledge Christ, figured in the person of Moses — the deprecator of the Father and the offerer of his own soul for the people's salvation. But it is enough if the people was even properly given to Moses for the present. What a servant could ask of his Lord, that the Lord asked of Himself. For to this end He said to His servant, "Let me alone, and I will destroy them," that the other, by asking and offering himself, should not let Him; and so you might learn how much is permitted to a faithful one and a prophet with God.

Now then, that I may dispatch the rest also in a summary, whatever things you yet gather, as little and weak and unworthy, toward the destruction of the Creator, I will propound by a plain and sure reasoning: that God could not have entered into intercourse with men unless He had taken on both human senses and human affections, through which He might temper, by His own humility, the force of His majesty — surely intolerable to human mediocrity — things unworthy of Himself indeed, but necessary for man, and so already worthy of God, because nothing is so worthy of God as the salvation of man. Of this I would treat at greater length, if I were dealing with the heathen — although even with heretics the engagement stands not much different. Inasmuch as you yourselves have now believed that God too was diversified into a figure and into the rest of the order of human condition, you will surely not require to be persuaded any longer that God conformed Himself to humanity, but you are convicted out of your own faith. For if a god — and indeed a loftier one — laid low the summit of his majesty in so great a humility as even to subject himself to death, and the death of the cross, why do you not think that some littlenesses suited our God too, yet more tolerable than the Jewish contumelies and gibbets and sepulchres? Or are these the littlenesses which ought from this very point to prejudge that Christ, exposed to human sufferings, is of that god to whom human things are reproached by you? For we even profess that Christ always acted in the name of God the Father; that He from the beginning held intercourse, He held converse with the patriarchs and prophets — the Son of the Creator, His Word, whom by putting Him forth from Himself He made His Son, and thenceforth set Him over His every disposition and will, diminishing Him a little beneath the angels, as it is written in David; by which diminution He was disposed by the Father even unto these things which you reprehend as human, learning even from the beginning, even from then, man, what He was to be in the end. He it is who descends, He who asks, He who demands, He who swears. For the rest, that the Father was seen of none even the common gospel will attest, Christ saying, "No one has known the Father but the Son." For He Himself had pronounced even in the Old Testament, "No man shall see God and live," determining the Father invisible, in whose authority and name He Himself was the God who was seen, namely the Son of God. But with us too Christ is received in the person of Christ, because in this manner also He is ours. Therefore whatever things you demand as worthy of God will be held in the Father, invisible and inaccessible and placid and (so to speak) the God of the philosophers. But whatever things you reprehend as unworthy will be reckoned to the Son, both seen and heard and met with, the arbiter of the Father and His minister, mingling in Himself man and God — in mighty works God, in littlenesses man — that He may confer upon man so much as He detracts from God. The whole, finally, that with you is the disgrace of my God, is the sacrament of man's salvation. God held converse, that man might be taught to do divine things. God dealt on equal terms with man, that man might be able to deal on equal terms with God. God was found little, that man might be made greatest. You who disdain such a God — I know not whether out of faith you believe in a crucified God. How great, then, is your perversity toward each order of the Creator? You designate Him a judge, and reproach the judge's severity, suited to the deserts of the causes, as fierceness. You demand a best god, and depreciate his leniency, suited to kindness, conducted more lowly to the capacity of human mediocrity, as littleness. Neither the great pleases you, nor the moderate; neither the judge, nor the friend. But what if now these same things be detected in your own god too? That he too is a judge we have already shown in his own little book; and from being a judge, of necessity severe; and from being severe, so also fierce — if indeed fierce.

Now too, concerning the littlenesses and malignities and the rest of the marks, I in turn will make Antitheses to rival Marcion's. If my God was ignorant that there was another above Him, your god too altogether knew not that there was another beneath him. For what that dark Heraclitus said — "the same way up and down." Finally, if he had not been ignorant, he would have met it even from the beginning. Sin and death, and the very author of sin, the devil, and every evil which my God suffered to exist, this yours too suffered to exist, who suffered it to exist. Our God changed His sentences — accordingly so did yours too. For he who so late regarded the human race changed that sentence by which for so great an age he regarded it not. It repented our God of evil in some matter — but yours too. For in that he at length turned his mind to man's salvation, he made a repentance, due to an evil deed, of his former dissembling. Further, the neglect of human salvation will be reckoned an evil deed, not amended save by repentance with your god. Our God commanded a fraud — but of gold and silver. But by how much man is more precious than gold and silver, by so much is your god the more fraudulent, who snatches man from his Lord and Maker. Our God demands eye for eye — but yours too, by forbidding the requital, does the rather an iterable injury. For who will not strike again, being not struck back? Our God knew not whom He accepted. Therefore neither did yours. He would not have accepted Judas the traitor, if he had foreknown. If you say the Creator lied somewhere, far greater is the lie in your Christ, whose body was not true. The fierceness of my God consumed many. Your god too, those whom he does not save, surely disposes unto destruction. My God commanded someone to be slain. Yours willed himself to be slain, no less a homicide against himself than against him by whom he willed to be slain. But that his god slew many I will prove to Marcion. For he made a homicide, surely to perish, unless indeed the people did no wrong against Christ. But ready virtue loves the truth with few words. Many words will be necessary to a lie.

For the rest, I would have cut down close at hand even Marcion's Antitheses themselves, had the defence of the Creator — as good as also judge — needed a more laborious destruction of them, according to the examples of either part suiting God, as we have shown. But if both parts, of goodness and of justice, make up a worthy plenitude of the divinity of the all-powerful One, in summary fashion meanwhile I can have beaten back the Antitheses, eager to discern, out of the qualities whether of dispositions or of laws or of virtues, and so to alienate Christ from the Creator, as the best from the judge, and the mild from the fierce, and the salutary from the destructive. For they rather conjoin those whom they set in those diversities which suit God. For so far was the substance one and the same to the divinities, good and severe; and by the same examples and in like arguments, that He willed to show His goodness in those in which He had sent severity before; since neither was the temporal diversity a wonder, if God was afterward milder for things subdued, who before was more austere for things untamed. So through the Antitheses it can the more easily be shown that the order of the Creator was reformed by Christ rather than beaten back, and rather restored than excluded — especially since you sever your god from every more bitter motion, and so, of course, from rivalry with the Creator. For if it be so, how do the Antitheses demonstrate him a rival of the Creator's several kinds? I will therefore acknowledge in this too, through them, my God a zealous God, who with His own right took beforehand care of His matters — too shrubby in the beginnings — with a good, as a rational, rivalry of maturity; whose Antitheses even His own world will acknowledge out of the contrarieties of the elements, yet modulated by the highest reason. Wherefore, most inconsiderate Marcion, you ought to have shown one god of light and another of darkness, that you might the more easily persuade of one god of goodness and another of severity. For the rest, the Antithesis will belong to Him whose it is in the world also.