Book 3

Following the track of my earlier work, which I am bent on restoring now that it has been lost, the argument here passes on to Christ — though this comes as an addition, after the defence already completed of the single Godhead. For it has been sufficiently established beforehand that Christ is to be understood as belonging to no other God than the Creator, since it was determined that no other God is to be believed in besides the Creator, whom indeed Christ proclaimed; and since the apostles in turn announced no other Christ than that of the very God whom Christ proclaimed, that is, the Creator — so that no mention of another God, and therefore none 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: namely, that the perversion of the rule is to be pronounced wherever the later date is found. This too I wove into my first book. But even now this separate encounter, which is to examine the question of Christ on its own, will at least achieve this, that while we prove Christ to be the Creator's, the god of Marcion is thereby also excluded. It befits truth to use all its forces, not as one in difficulty. For the rest, in the shorthand of legal objections it wins outright. But it has been resolved to meet at every point an adversary so frantic with eagerness that he has more readily presumed that a Christ has come who was never announced than the one who was always proclaimed.

Here, then, I join the first step of the argument: whether he ought to have come so suddenly. First, because he too is the son of his own god. For this was the proper order: that the Father should profess the Son before the Son the Father, and that the Father should bear witness concerning the Son before the Son concerning the Father. Next, because he was sent, over and above the name of son. For the patronage of the sender ought likewise to have preceded as testimony to the one sent, since no one who comes on the authority of another vindicates that authority for himself by his own assertion, but rather looks for his defence from that other, with the prior recommendation of him who supplies the authority. For the rest, neither will he be acknowledged as a son whom the father never named, nor believed to be sent whom the commissioner never designated — though the father would have named him and the commissioner designated him, had there been one. Everything will be held suspect that has strayed from the rule, and the primary order of things does not allow the father to be acknowledged after the son, the commissioner after the commission, and God after Christ. Nothing is prior to its own origin in being acknowledged, just as nothing is prior to it in being arranged. Suddenly a son, suddenly sent, suddenly Christ. And yet I should think nothing sudden with God, since nothing is unarranged by God. But if it was arranged, why was it not also proclaimed, so that it might be proved both arranged from the proclamation and divine from the arrangement? And surely a work so great — one prepared, namely, for the salvation of mankind — would not, even on this account, have been sudden, in that it was to profit through faith. For just as it had to be believed in order to profit, so it required preparation in order to be capable of being believed, built upon the foundations of arrangement and proclamation. By this order faith was rightly to be shaped, both shown to man by God and presented to God by man — bound to believe from acknowledgement that the thing was possible, having learned to believe it, that is, from the proclamation.

There was no need, you say, of any such order, because he was about to prove himself at once both son and sent and the Christ of God by the very facts, through the evidences of his powers. But I shall deny that this appearance alone availed for his testimony — an appearance which he himself afterward discredited, seeing that, in declaring that many would come and work signs and produce great powers, even to the turning aside of the elect, and yet were not on that account to be admitted, he showed how rash is faith placed in signs and powers, since these are most readily produced even among false Christs. Or what kind of thing is it, if he wished himself to be proved and understood and received from this source — I mean from powers — by which he refused that the rest should equally be received, men who likewise were to come as suddenly as they were proclaimed by no author? If it is because he came before them and was the first to seal the evidence of powers that he thus occupied faith, as one occupies a place at the baths, and snatched it away from any who came later — see that he too is not caught in the condition of those who come later, found later than the Creator already known beforehand, and accordingly already having worked powers before, and already having declared that none other was to be believed except after him, the Creator namely. Therefore if to have come first and to have pronounced first concerning those who come later is to shut out their faith, then he too will already stand condemned beforehand by the very fact that he is acknowledged as later; and the authority to lay this down upon those who come later will belong to the Creator alone, who could be later than none. Even now, since I am about to prove that the Creator gave forth those same powers — which alone you claim for your Christ's credit — sometimes of old through his servants, and at other times appointed them to be given forth through his Christ, I can on this very ground rightly object that Christ was all the more not to be believed on the strength of powers alone, in proportion as men could not but interpret him as belonging to none other than the Creator, since they answered to the Creator's own powers, both those given forth through his servants and those promised in his Christ. And yet, even if other evidences — new ones, namely — were found in your Christ, we should more readily believe that the new things too belonged to him whose the old also are, than to one whose are only the new, lacking the trials of a victorious faith founded on antiquity. So that even thus he ought to have come as one proclaimed, with both his own proclamations building up faith in him and his powers doing the same — especially against the Christ of the Creator who is to come, fortified with his own signs and prophets — so that the rival of Christ might shine forth through every species of difference. But how could the Christ of a god never proclaimed himself be proclaimed? This, then, is what the case requires: that neither your god nor your Christ be believed, since the god ought not to have remained unknown, and Christ ought to have been acknowledged through the god.

He disdained, I suppose, to imitate the order of our God — as displeased with him, and that precisely when he was to refute him. Being new, he wished to come in a new way: a son before the Father's profession, and sent before the authority of the commissioner — so that he might himself bring in a faith of the most monstrous kind, by which it should be believed that Christ had come before it was known that he existed. It is also fitting for me to take up this point: why he did not come after Christ. For when I consider that his lord was so very long-suffering toward a most harsh Creator who in the meantime was announcing his own Christ to men — by whatever reason he did this, deferring both his own revelation and his intervention — by that same reason I say that he ought to have shown patience toward the Creator in respect of his Christ also, who was to carry out his own arrangements, so that, once every operation of the rival god and the rival Christ had been completed and fulfilled, he might then at last bring on his own arrangements over them. But repentance of so great a patience produced this, that he did not persevere to the end of the Creator's affairs. To no purpose did he endure that the Christ should be proclaimed of one whom he did not endure to be displayed. Either he broke into the course of another's time without cause, or without cause he did not break into it so long. What detained him, or what disturbed him? And yet he transgressed in both directions: revealed too late after the Creator, but too early before his Christ. The one he ought long since to have done away with, the other not yet. Not to have endured the one raging so long, but to have disquieted the other while he was still at rest! In regard to both he falls away from the title of the supremely good god — certainly himself variable and uncertain, lukewarm, that is, toward the Creator and hot against Christ, and to no purpose in both. For he no more held the Creator in check than he stood in the way of Christ. The Creator remains, just as he is altogether; and Christ will come, just as he is described. Why did he come after the Creator, whom he could not amend? Why was he revealed before his Christ, whom he could not recall? Or if he amended the Creator, he was revealed after him so that the things to be amended might come first: therefore he ought likewise to have waited for his Christ, intending to amend him too, and so likewise to be the later amender of him, just as of the Creator. It is another matter if he too is to come again after him — so that at his first coming he advanced against the Creator, destroying his law and prophets, but at his second he should advance against Christ, refuting his kingdom. Then, therefore, when he has completed his own order, then, if at all, is he to be believed; or else, if his work is already perfect from this point, then he is to come to no purpose, accomplishing nothing.

Let me have made these preliminary thrusts as it were from the first step still, and as it were from a distance. But seeing that from here I am now to fight in close combat for a fixed conclusion, I see that certain lines must even now be drawn first, lines along which the fight must be conducted — the Scriptures of the Creator, namely. For since it is by these that I am about to prove that Christ belonged to the Creator, as fulfilled afterward in his Christ, I must of necessity first lay down the form and, so to speak, the nature of these very Scriptures, lest, when they are brought into the dispute and applied to the cases, their defence both of themselves and of the cases be confused and blunt the reader's attention. Two properties, then, of prophetic utterance I allege as henceforth to be acknowledged by our adversaries. One, by which future things are sometimes announced as already past. For it befits Divinity to reckon whatever it has decreed as already accomplished, since with it there is no difference of time, with whom eternity itself directs the uniform state of the seasons. And it is more proper to prophetic divination to display what it foresees, while it foresees it, as already seen and thus already discharged — that is, in every way future — as through Isaiah: "I have set my back for scourges, but my cheeks for blows, and my face I turned not away from spittings." For whether even then Christ was pronouncing this concerning himself, as we hold, or the prophet was pronouncing concerning himself, as the Jews hold, what was not yet done was nonetheless uttered as already past. The other species will be that by which very many things are foreshown figuratively, through riddles and allegories and parables, to be understood otherwise than as they are written. For we read that the mountains shall drop sweetness — yet not so that you should expect must from the rocks or new 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 press cakes and cheeses from the clods; since neither did God promise himself to be at once a waterworks-engineer and a husbandman, when he says, "I will set rivers in a thirsting region, and in the wilderness the box-tree and the cedar." Likewise, when he proclaims concerning the conversion of the nations, "The beasts of the field shall bless me, the sirens and the daughters of the sparrows," he is certainly not going to derive favourable omens from the young of swallows and from little foxes and from those monstrous and fabulous songstresses. And why should I say more of this kind? — when even the apostle of the heretics interprets that very law which grants a free mouth to the oxen that tread out the grain, not of oxen but of us; and alleges that the rock which supplied drink was a companion, Christ; teaching likewise that the two pleas concerning the sons of Abraham ran their course allegorically among the Galatians; and suggesting to the Ephesians that what was proclaimed at the beginning concerning the man who would leave father and mother, the two to become one flesh, this he recognizes in Christ and the Church.

If it is now sufficiently settled concerning these two properties, in the meantime, of Jewish literature, remember, reader, that it has been settled — so that, when we have brought forward something of this kind, the question may not be reopened about the form of the Scripture, but only about 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 had not yet come who was always proclaimed; and thus it was compelled to ally itself with Jewish error and to build its argument out of it — as though the Jews, themselves also assured that the one who came was another, had not only rejected him as a stranger but even killed him as an adversary, whereas they would certainly have acknowledged him and attended him with every office of religion, had he been their own. No doubt it was not the Rhodian law but the Pontic that provided for that skipper, that the Jews might not be allowed to err concerning their own Christ — when, even if nothing of the kind were found proclaimed against them, the merely human condition, liable to deception, would surely have persuaded that the Jews could have erred, inasmuch as they are men; nor is any prejudgment at once to be drawn about the verdict of those whom it was credible to have erred. Moreover, since it was also proclaimed that they would not acknowledge Christ and would therefore even kill him, then he himself will be the one both unknown to them and slain by them, against whom they were thus marked out beforehand as bound to offend. If you demand that this be proved, I will not unroll those Scriptures which, declaring Christ liable to be slain, certainly affirm him also to be liable to be unrecognized — for unless he had been unrecognized, he could clearly have suffered nothing; but reserving these for the question of the passion, it will suffice for the present to bring forward those proclamations which meanwhile prove Christ liable to be unrecognized, and this briefly, while they show that all force of understanding was taken away from the people by the Creator. "I will take away," he says, "the wisdom of their wise men, and the prudence of their prudent men I will hide"; and, "With the ear you shall hear, and shall not hear; and with the eyes you shall see, and shall not see: for the heart of this people is waxed gross, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and they have closed their eyes; lest at any time they should hear with their ears and see with their eyes and understand with the heart and be converted, and I should heal them." For they had deserved this dulling of their saving senses, loving God with their lips but standing far off from him with their heart. Therefore, if Christ indeed was being announced by the Creator — who consolidates the thunder, and shuts up the spirit, and announces his Christ to men, according to the prophet Joel — if all the hope of the Jews, not to say of the Gentiles too, was set upon the revelation of Christ, then without doubt they were shown to be such as would not acknowledge and not understand him, the powers of acknowledgement and understanding being taken away, wisdom and prudence; so that he who was announced — that is, Christ — their chief wise men, that is the scribes, and their prudent men, that is the Pharisees, were to err concerning him; and likewise the people, who with the ears were to hear and not hear — namely Christ teaching — and with the eyes to see and not see — namely Christ working signs — according to what is said elsewhere too: "And who is blind, but my children? and who is deaf, but those who rule them?" But also when he reproaches through the same Isaiah: "I have begotten and exalted sons, but they have rejected me; the ox knew his owner and the ass his master's crib, but Israel has not known me, and the people has not understood me." We indeed, certain that Christ always spoke in the prophets — the Spirit, namely, of the Creator, as the prophet testifies, "The person of our spirit, Christ the Lord," who from the beginning, the vicar of the Father, was both heard and seen in God's name — we know that those very utterances were his, reproaching Israel even then with the things they were foretold to commit against him: "You have forsaken the Lord, and have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel." But if you should prefer to refer the whole reckoning of Jewish ignorance, from of old, not to Christ but rather to God himself — unwilling that even the Word and the Spirit of the past, that is, the Christ of the Creator, should be despised and unrecognized by them — even thus you are refuted. For, not denying that the Christ of the Creator is his Son and Spirit and substance, you must of necessity grant that those who did not acknowledge the Father could not acknowledge the Son either, through the condition of the same substance: for if the fullness was not understood, much more the portion — certainly inasmuch as it shares in the fullness. These things being so discerned, it now appears how the Jews both rejected and killed Christ, not understanding him as a strange Christ, but failing to acknowledge their own. For how could they have understood as a stranger one of whom nothing had ever been announced, when they could not understand one of whom it had always been proclaimed? For that admits of being understood or not understood which, having the substance of proclamation, will have also the matter either of acknowledgement or of error; whereas that which lacks matter does not admit of any outcome of wisdom. And so far is it from being the case that they rejected and persecuted Christ as belonging to another god — rather, only as a man whom they considered an impostor in signs and a rival in doctrines — that they brought even the man himself, as their own, that is, as a Jew, but a transgressor and destroyer of Judaism, to trial, and punished him by their own right, since they would surely not have judged a stranger. So far is it from appearing that they understood Christ to be an alien, who did not even judge his manhood to be that of an alien.

Let the heretic now learn over and above — since it is permitted, along with the Jew himself — the very reason of his errors, by which, having borrowed his lead from him in this argument, blind from blind, he has fallen into the same pit. We say that two states of Christ, demonstrated by the prophets, marked beforehand just so many comings of his: one in lowliness — the first, surely — when he was to be led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb dumb before the shearer, so not opening his mouth, not comely even in look. "For we announced concerning him," he says, "as a little child, as a root in a thirsting earth; and he has no comeliness nor glory, and we saw him, and he had no comeliness nor beauty; but his appearance was without honour, failing beyond the sons of men, a man under stroke, and knowing how to bear infirmity" — so that he was set by the Father for a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence, made a little less than the angels by him, pronouncing himself a worm and not a man, the shame of man and the outcast of the people. These tokens of ignobility befit the first coming, just as those of loftiness befit the second, when he will become no longer a stone of stumbling nor a rock of offence, but the chief corner-stone, taken up after rejection and exalted to the completion of the temple — the Church, namely; and surely that rock in Daniel, cut out of the mountain, which shall break and grind to powder the image of the worldly kingdoms. Concerning which coming the same prophet says: "And behold, with the clouds of heaven, as the son of man, coming, he came even to the Ancient of days, and was present in his sight; and they that stood by brought him forward, 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 unto everlasting, which shall not be taken away, and his kingdom, which shall not be corrupted" — then, namely, when he is to have both an honourable appearance and an unfailing beauty beyond the sons of men. "For seasonable," he says, "in beauty beyond the sons of men, grace is poured out upon thy lips; therefore God has blessed thee for ever. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, mighty one, in thy seasonableness and thy beauty" — when the Father, too, after he has diminished him somewhat below the angels, "will crown him with glory and honour, and will put all things under his feet." Then also "they who pierced him will know him," and will smite their breasts, tribe against tribe — surely because formerly they did not acknowledge him in the lowliness of the human condition. "And he is man," says Jeremiah, "and who shall know him?" Because also, "His generation," says Isaiah, "who shall declare?" So too in Zechariah, in the person of Jesus — nay, even in the very mystery of the name, the true high priest of the Father, Christ Jesus — he is delineated in a twofold state for the two comings: first clothed in filthy garments, that is, in the indignity of passible and mortal flesh, when the devil also opposed him, the author, namely, of Judas the betrayer — not to say also the tempter after baptism — and then, stripped of his former filth, adorned with the long robe and the mitre and the clean turban, that is, with the glory and honour of the second coming. For if I should also expound the two goats that were offered at the fast, do not these too figure the twofold order of Christ? Alike indeed and very similar, on account of the same Lord beheld — since he is to come in no other form, as one who is to be recognized by those by whom he was wounded. But one of them, surrounded with scarlet, cursed and spat upon and torn and pricked, was thrust by the people outside the city into destruction, marked with the plain insignia of the Lord's passion. The other, however, offered for sins and given to the priests of the temple for food, signed the proofs of the second manifestation, by which, all sins being expiated, the priests of the spiritual temple — that is, of the Church — should enjoy as it were a certain banquet of the Lord's grace, while the rest fast from salvation. Therefore, since the first coming was sung both for the most part overshadowed by figures and prostrated in every dishonour, but the second both manifest and worthy of God — for this reason, looking to the one they could easily both understand and believe, that is, the second, they were not without cause deceived concerning 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 came not in loftiness — while they are ignorant that he was to come also in lowliness.

Let the heretic now cease — an asp, as the saying goes, borrowing venom from a viper, from the Jew — let him now vomit out the poison of his own genius, claiming Christ to be a phantom. Save that even this opinion will have other authors: the half-baked and as it were abortive Marcionites, whom the apostle John pronounced antichrists, denying that Christ came in the flesh — yet not so as to establish the right of another god, for on that score too they would have been censured, but because they had presumed it incredible that God should be flesh. The more did the antichrist Marcion seize that presumption for himself, the more apt, namely, to deny the bodily substance of Christ, seeing that he had introduced his very god as neither the author nor the raiser-up of flesh — the best, no doubt, in this point too, and most utterly different from the lies and deceits of the Creator. And therefore his Christ, lest he should lie, lest he should deceive, and in this way perhaps be reckoned the Creator's, was not what he appeared, and lied as to what he was: flesh and not flesh, man and not man, and accordingly God a Christ, and not God. For why should he not have also carried about a phantom of deity? Or shall I believe him concerning his inner substance, who has cheated me concerning the outer? How shall he be held truthful in what is hidden, found so deceptive in what is open? But how, confusing in himself the truth of the spirit by the deceit of the flesh, did he commit that communion, denied by the apostle, of light — that is, of truth — and of deceit — that is, of darkness? Even now, when Christ-as-flesh is detected as a lie, it follows that all the things too which were done through the flesh of Christ were done in lie: encounters, contacts, eatings-together, the very powers as well. For if by touching someone he freed him from a defect, or was touched by someone, what was done bodily cannot be believed to have been truly done without the truth of the body itself. Nothing solid could be accomplished by what is empty, nothing full by what is void. A seeming state, a seeming act: an imaginary worker, imaginary works. So neither will the passions 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, therefore, is overturned. The whole weight and fruit of the Christian name, the death of Christ, is denied — which the apostle so emphatically enjoins as true, making it the supreme foundation of the gospel and of our salvation and of his own preaching: "For I delivered to you first of all," he says, "that Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day." But if his flesh is denied, how is his death asserted, which is the proper passion of the flesh, of one passing through death into the earth from which it was taken, according to the law of its own author? And his death being denied, since the flesh is denied, neither will his resurrection stand. For he did not rise for the same reason that he did not die: namely, not having the substance of the flesh, whose, just as death, so also resurrection is. Accordingly, the resurrection of Christ being invalidated, ours too is overthrown. For that will not avail for which Christ came, if his own will not avail. For just as those who said there is no resurrection of the dead are refuted by the apostle from the resurrection of Christ, so, the resurrection of Christ not standing, the resurrection of the dead too is taken away. And thus our faith is vain, and the preaching of the apostles is vain. They are found, moreover, even false witnesses of God, in that they bore witness, as it were, that God raised up Christ, whom he did not raise. And we are still in our sins. And those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished — destined indeed to rise again, but as a phantom perhaps, like Christ himself.

In this question, you who think that the angels of the Creator are to be set against us — as though they too acted in phantom, of seeming flesh, no doubt, with Abraham and Lot, and yet truly both met and were fed and did what had been commanded them — in the first place, you are not admitted to the examples of that God whom you are demolishing. For the better and more perfect a god you bring in, the more his examples are unfit for that god of yours, who, unless he is wholly different, will not at all be better and more perfect. Next, know that not even this is conceded to you, that the flesh in the angels was seeming, but rather of a true and solid human substance. For if it was no hard matter for that god to exhibit true sensations and acts of a seeming flesh, much more easily had he, to true sensations and acts, given a true substance of flesh — at least inasmuch as he is its proper author and craftsman. But your god, in that he has produced no flesh at all, may perhaps with reason have brought in a phantom of that whose truth he could not command. My God, however, who reformed that flesh, taken from the slime, into this quality, not yet from conjugal seed and yet flesh — was equally able, from whatever material, to have built up flesh for angels too, who also built the world out of nothing into so many and such bodies, and that by a word. And surely, if your god at some time promises men the true substance of angels — "For they shall be," he says, "as the angels" — why should not my God have fitted angels with the true substance of men, taken from wherever? For since you yourself will not answer me whence that angelic substance is taken among you, it suffices me to define this much, what is fitting for God: namely, the truth of that very thing which he set before three witnessing senses — sight, touch, hearing. It is harder for God to lie than to produce, from wherever, the truth of flesh, though not born. As for the rest, even to other heretics, who define that that flesh in the angels ought to have been born of flesh if it had truly been human, we answer with a sure reasoning, by which it both was truly human and unborn: truly human, on account of God's truthfulness as against the lie and deceit of the stranger-god, and because they could not be dealt with humanly by men except in a human substance; but unborn, because Christ alone was to be born into flesh out of flesh, that he might reform our nativity by his nativity, and so might dissolve our death too by his death, rising again in the flesh in which he was born, that he might also be able to die. Therefore he himself too, then, with the angels at Abraham's, appeared indeed in the truth of flesh, but not yet born, because not yet about to die — and as one already learning to converse among men. The more, then, the angels, neither appointed to die for us, ought not to have taken that brief loan of flesh by being born, since they were not, by dying, to lay it aside; but, taken from wherever and dismissed altogether in whatever way, they yet did not lie as to it. If the Creator makes his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire — as truly spirits as also fire — the same truly made them flesh too, that we may now recall and announce to the heretics that it is his promise to reform men at some time into angels, who once formed angels into men.

Since, then, I am not admitted to the partnership of the Creator's examples — as belonging to a stranger and having their own reasons — I would have you yourself publish the counsel of your god, by which he displayed his Christ not in the truth of flesh. If he spurned that flesh as earthy and, as you say, stuffed with dung, why did he not likewise despise the likeness of it? For the image of no thing to be disdained is to be deemed worthy. The likeness follows the state. But how was he to converse among men except through an image of the human substance? Why, then, not rather through the truth, so that he might truly converse, if he had need to converse? How much more worthily would necessity have administered faith than a trick! You set up a sufficiently wretched god by this very thing, that he could not exhibit his Christ except in the effigy of a thing unworthy, and that, too, of a stranger's. For it will suit somewhat to use things unworthy if they are one's own, just as it will not be fitting to use a stranger's things, even though worthy. For why did he not come in some other, worthier substance, and above all in his own, lest he should seem to have stood in need both of what was unworthy and of what was a stranger's? If my Creator met with man both through the bush and the fire, and the same afterward through the cloud and the column, and used the bodies of the elements in representations of himself, these examples sufficiently show that God needed the preparation of neither a false nor even a true flesh. For the rest, if we look to the truth, no substance is worthy that God should put it on. Whatever he puts on, he himself makes worthy — without a lie, however. And therefore what kind of thing is it that he reckoned the truth of flesh more a disgrace than the lie of flesh? And yet he honoured that flesh by counterfeiting it. How great, then, is the flesh whose phantom was necessary to a superior god!

All these sleights-of-hand about a seeming corpulence in Christ Marcion took up with this intent: that the nativity of Christ might not, from the testimony of a human substance, also be defended, and so Christ be claimed for the Creator, as being announced one capable of being born and therefore fleshly. Most foolish here too is the man of Pontus; as though flesh in God should not more easily be believed unborn than false — especially when this very faith is built up beforehand by the angels of the Creator, who conversed in true flesh, yet not born. For that Philumene too rather persuaded Apelles and the rest of Marcion's deserters that Christ did indeed, in good faith, carry about flesh, but of no nativity — having, namely, borrowed it from the elements. But if Marcion was afraid that faith in flesh would bring in faith in nativity too, then doubtless one who appeared a man was at any rate believed born. For a certain woman had cried out, "Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the breasts that thou hast sucked." And how were his mother and his brothers said to stand outside? But we shall see about these chapters in their place. Certainly, since he himself too proclaimed himself the son of man, he was professing himself born. Now, that I may put off all these things to the examination of the gospel — yet, as I laid down above, if in every way he had to be believed born who appeared a man, to no purpose did he think that faith in nativity should be cancelled by a design of imaginary flesh. For what did it profit that what was held as true was not truly so, both flesh and nativity? Human opinion may see to that: already you honour your god with the title of deceit, if he knew himself to be other than what he had made men think. Even then you might have fitted him also with a seeming nativity, so as not to have dashed against this question too. For even little women sometimes seem to themselves pregnant, swollen either by a tribute of blood or by some ailment. And surely he ought to have run through the whole scene of a phantom, so as not to have danced past the origin of the flesh, having acted the person of the substance itself. Plainly you refused the lie of nativity: for you have brought forth the very flesh as true. A most shameful thing, no doubt, even a true nativity for God! Come now, harangue against those most holy and reverend works of nature, inveigh against the whole of what you are: destroy the origin of flesh and soul; call the womb a sewer, the workshop, that is, for producing so great an animal, namely man; pursue with abuse the unclean and shameful torments of childbirth, and then the foul, anxious, ludicrous issues of the delivery itself. And yet, when you have destroyed all these things, to confirm them as unworthy of God, nativity will be no more unworthy than death, infancy than the cross, nature than punishment, the flesh than condemnation. If Christ truly suffered these things, it was a smaller thing to be born. If he suffered them in a lie, as a phantom, he could also have been born in a lie. These chief arguments of Marcion, by which he makes another Christ, we have, I think, sufficiently shown not to stand at all, while we teach that truth befits God rather than the lie of that state in which he displayed his Christ. If it was truth, it was flesh; if it was flesh, he was born. For those things which this heresy assaults are confirmed when those by which it assaults are destroyed. And so, if he is to be held fleshly because born, and born because fleshly, because he was no phantom, he himself will have to be acknowledged who was announced by the prophets of the Creator as to come in flesh and from nativity — the Christ of the Creator, that is.

Appeal now, as you are wont, to that comparison of Christ in Isaiah, contending that it suits in nothing. For first, you say, the Christ of Isaiah is to be called Emmanuel; next, to take the strength of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians. But this one who came was neither published under such a name nor performed any warlike deed. But I will admonish you to recognize the coherence too of both passages. For there is subjoined also the interpretation of Emmanuel: "God with us"; that you may regard not only the sound of the name but also the sense. For the sound, which is Emmanuel, in Hebrew, belongs to its own nation; but its sense, which is "God with us," from the interpretation is common to all. Inquire, then, whether this utterance, "God with us," which is Emmanuel, has, ever since Christ shone forth, been bandied about in Christ. And I think you will not deny it, seeing that you yourself too say, "It is called God with us," that is, Emmanuel. Or if you are so empty that, because among you it is called "God with us," not Emmanuel, you on that account refuse that he has come whose own it is to be called Emmanuel — as though this were not also "God with us" — you will find among the Hebrew Christians, nay among the Marcionites too, that they name Emmanuel when they wish to say "God with us"; just as every nation, with whatever sound it has said "God with us," has pronounced Emmanuel in sense, cancelling the sound. But if Emmanuel is "God with us," and "God with us" is Christ, who is also in us — for as many of you as have been dipped into Christ have put on Christ — then Christ is as properly his in the signification of the name, which is "God with us," as in the sound of the name, which is Emmanuel. And so it stands that he has now come who was proclaimed Emmanuel, because what Emmanuel signifies has come, that is, "God with us."

Likewise too you are led by the sound of names, when you take "the strength of Damascus" and "the spoils of Samaria" and "the king of the Assyrians" as though they portended the Christ of the Creator a warrior, not noticing what the Scripture promises. "Since, before he knows to call father and mother, he shall receive the strength of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians." For first you ought to look at the indication of age — whether it can exhibit Christ a man as yet, let alone a commander. No doubt the infant was about to call to arms by his wailing, and to give the signals of war not with a trumpet but with a rattle; and was about to mark out the enemy not from horse or from chariot or from a wall, but from the neck or back of his nurse or bearer; and so to subdue Damascus and Samaria in exchange for his pap. It is another matter if among the Pontic peoples, of a barbarous nation, the infants burst out into battle — anointed first, I suppose, in the sun, then armed with rags and provisioned with butter, who know how to handle a lance before they can mangle. But truly, if nature nowhere concedes this — to do military service before living, to take the strength of Damascus before knowing the word for father and mother — it follows that the pronouncement is seen to be figurative. "But that a virgin should bear," you say, "nature does not permit; and yet the prophet is believed." And rightly. For he built up faith in the incredible thing beforehand by giving the reason, namely that it would be for a sign. "Therefore," he says, "the Lord himself will give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and shall bear a son." Now a sign from God, unless it were some monstrous novelty, would not have been worthy of the name. In short, even the Jews, when at any time they dare to lie in order to cast us down — as though the Scripture contained not "a virgin," but "a young woman," who should conceive and bear — are refuted from this very point, that nothing could seem a sign which is an everyday matter, namely the pregnancy and childbirth of a young woman. So, the virgin-and-mother being appointed for a sign, she is rightly believed; but the infant-warrior is not equally so. For here the reason of a sign is not at work. But, the sign of the new nativity being assigned, then, after the sign, another order is declared, of the infant now about to eat honey and butter. Nor indeed is this a sign — of the malice he will not assent to; for this too belongs to infancy — but of his receiving the strength of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians. Keep the measure of his age, and seek the sense of the proclamation; nay, restore to the gospel the truth which, as a latecomer, you have detracted, and the prophecy is understood just as it is announced fulfilled. Now let those Magi of the East remain, honouring with gold and frankincense the new-born Christ in his infancy, and let the infant have received the strength of Damascus without battle and arms. For besides what is known to all — that the strength of the East, that is, its might and resources, is wont to abound in gold and perfumes — surely it belongs to the Creator to make even the gold of the other nations a strength, as through Zechariah: "And Judah shall set himself before Jerusalem and shall gather all the valour of the peoples round about, gold and silver." And concerning that gift of gold David then too: "And there shall be given to him of the gold of Arabia"; and again, "The kings of the Arabs and of Saba shall offer gifts to him." For the East had the Magi too for kings, well-nigh; and Damascus was formerly reckoned to Arabia, before it was transcribed into Syrophoenicia by the distinction of the Syrias — whose strength then Christ received, by receiving its insignia, namely gold and perfume. But the "spoils of Samaria" are the Magi themselves, who, when they had recognized him and honoured him with gifts and adored him on bended knee as god and king, under the testimony of the star their guide and leader, were made the spoils of Samaria, that is, of idolatry, believing, namely, in Christ. For he marked idolatry by the name of Samaria, as one infamous for idolatry, by which it had then revolted from God under king Jeroboam. Nor is this new to the Creator, to use figuratively a transference of names from a comparison of crimes. For he calls the rulers of the Jews rulers of the Sodomites, and the people itself he calls the people of Gomorrah. And the same elsewhere: "Thy father," he says, "was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite," on account of a like impiety — those whom at another time he had also called his own sons: "I have begotten and exalted sons." So too Egypt is sometimes understood, with him, as the whole world, under the description of superstition and malediction. So too Babylon, even in our John, is a figure of the city of Rome — likewise great, and proud in empire, and a warrior against the saints of God. By this usage, then, he entitled the Magi too, despoiled, by the appellation of Samaritans, because they had with the Samaritans, as we have said, idolatry. But "against the king of the Assyrians" understand against Herod, against whom the Magi at that time surely set themselves by not reporting concerning Christ, whom he was seeking to intercept.

This our interpretation will be helped, while elsewhere too, supposing Christ a warrior on account of certain names of arms and words of this kind, you are convicted by a comparison of the remaining senses as well. "Gird," says David, "thy sword upon thy thigh." But what do you read above concerning Christ? "Seasonable in beauty beyond the sons of men, grace is poured out upon thy lips." I laugh, if to him whom he was girding with a sword for war he was flattering about the seasonableness of beauty and the grace of lips. So likewise, subjoining, "And stretch forth, and prosper, and reign," he added, "for the sake of truth and gentleness and justice." For who will work these things with a sword, and not rather the contraries, deceit and harshness and injustice — the proper businesses, namely, of battles? Let us see, then, whether that sword be of another kind, whose act is of another kind. For the apostle John too, in the Apocalypse, describes a sword going forth from the mouth of God, twice-sharp, fore-sharpened — which we must understand to be the divine word; twice-sharp, by the two testaments of the law and the gospel; sharp with wisdom, hostile to the devil, arming us against the spiritual hosts of wickedness and of all concupiscence, cutting us off even from those dearest to us for the name of God. But if you will not have John acknowledged, you have our common master Paul, girding our loins with truth and the breastplate of justice, and shoeing us with the preparation of the gospel of peace, not of war, bidding us take the shield of faith, in which we may 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 sword the Lord himself too came to send upon the earth, not peace. If your Christ is meant, then he too is a warrior. If he is not a warrior, brandishing an allegorical sword, then it was permitted to the Christ of the Creator also, in the psalm, to be girt without warlike matters with a figurative sword of the word — to whom the aforesaid seasonableness suits, and the grace of lips — with which he was then already girt upon his thigh, in David, intending one day to send it into the earth. For this is what he says: "And stretch forth, and prosper, and reign." Stretching forth the word into all the earth, to the calling of all nations; about to prosper by the success of the faith by which he was received; and reigning thenceforth, by which he conquered death by resurrection. "And thy right hand," he says, "shall lead thee wonderfully" — namely the power of spiritual grace, by which the acknowledgement of Christ is led on. "Thy arrows are sharp" — precepts flying everywhere, and threats and exposures of the heart, pricking and piercing every conscience. "The peoples shall fall under thee" — namely in adoration. So mighty in war and bearer of arms is the Christ of the Creator; so even now he receives spoils, not of Samaria alone but of all nations too. Recognize the spoils as figurative, whose arms you have learned to be allegorical. Since, then, the Lord speaks thus figuratively, and the apostle writes so, it is not rashly that we use his interpretations, the examples of which even our adversaries admit; and thus the Christ who has come will belong to Isaiah just in so far as he was no warrior, because no such one is proclaimed by Isaiah.

Concerning the question of the flesh, and through it of nativity, and of the one name Emmanuel, thus far. But concerning the other names, and chiefly that of "Christ," what will the opposite party reply? If the name of Christ is common among you in the same way as that of "God," so that, just as it suits to call the Son of each god Christ, so to call each father Lord — certainly reason will be against this argument. For the name of God, as being natural to deity, can be communicated to all to whom deity is claimed, just as also to idols, the apostle saying, "For there are also those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth." But the name of Christ, not coming from nature but from arrangement, becomes the proper name of him by whom it is found to have been arranged. Nor does it lie open to communication with another god — chiefly a rival, and one having his own arrangement, to whom he will also owe private names. For what kind of thing is it that, having invented diverse arrangements of two gods, they admit a community of names in discord of arrangements — when no proof would more strongly stand for two gods, and those rivals, than if in their arrangement a diversity of names too were found? For no state of differences is sealed except by the propriety of appellations. And when these are wanting, the Greek catachresis comes to the rescue, by abusing what belongs to another. But with God, I think, nothing ought to be wanting, nor should his arrangements be furnished out of another's. What god is this, who claims for his own son too names from the Creator? — I do not say a stranger's, but old and common ones, which even on that account would not suit a new and unknown god. How, in short, does he teach that a new patch is not to be sewn on an old garment, nor new wine entrusted to old skins, being himself sewn over and clothed in the old age of names? How did he cut off the gospel from the law, clad in the whole law? — in the name, namely, of Christ. Who forbade him to be called by one thing, while he preached another, while he came from elsewhere — since on this very account he did not even take the truth of a body, lest he should be believed the Christ of the Creator? But to no purpose did he refuse to seem the one he wished to be called; for even if he had truly been corporeal, he would the rather not seem the Christ of the Creator, if he were not so called. But as it is, he spurns the substance whose name he received — though he would have proved the substance from the name. For if Christ is "anointed," to be anointed is surely a passion of a body. He who had no body could not at all be anointed; he who could not at all be anointed 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 by a name solemn and familiar among them?" You make God out inconstant or crafty; it is the counsel either of diffidence or of malice, to gain something by deceiving. Far more freely and simply did the false prophets act against the Creator, coming in the name of their own god. But neither do I find any effect of this counsel, since they more readily believed either their own Christ, or rather some impostor, than the Christ of another god — as the gospel will prove.

Now, if he caught at the name of Christ, as a sneak-thief at a dole-basket, why did he also wish to be called Jesus — a name not so awaited among the Jews? For even if we, having attained by the grace of God an understanding of his mysteries, acknowledge this name too as destined for Christ, it does not follow that to the Jews, from whom wisdom was taken away, the matter will be known. In short, to this day they look for a Christ, not a Jesus, and interpret Christ to be rather Elias than Jesus. He, then, who came also in that name in which the Christ was not presumed, could have come only in that name which alone was presumed. But, since he mixed with God — the awaited and the unawaited — both his counsels are confounded. For if for this reason Christ — that in the meantime he might creep in as it were the Creator's — Jesus stealthily attaches, because a Jesus was not expected in the Christ of the Creator: or if for this reason Jesus — that he might be held another's — Christ does not allow it, because no Christ of another was expected than the Creator's. Which of these can stand, I do not know. But both will stand in the Christ of the Creator, in whom Jesus too is found. "How?" you ask. Learn here too, along with the Jews, the partners of your error. When the successor of Moses was being appointed, Hoshea son of Nun, was he not certainly transferred from his former name and begin to be called Jesus? "Certainly," you say. We say this was first a figure of the future. For because 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, the possession of eternal life, than which nothing is sweeter; and this not through Moses, that is, not through the discipline of the law, but through Jesus, through the grace of the gospel, when we have been circumcised with a knife of stone, that is, with the precepts of Christ — for Christ is a rock — therefore that man, who was being prepared in the images of this mystery, was inaugurated also with the figure of the Lord's name, surnamed Jesus. This name Christ himself testified to be his own even then, when he spoke to Moses. For who spoke, but the Spirit of the Creator, who is Christ? When, then, by command he said to the people, "Behold, I send my angel before thy face, who shall keep thee in the way and bring thee into the land which I have prepared for thee; attend to him and hearken to him, do not disobey him: for I have not hidden it from thee, since my name is upon him." He called him an angel indeed, on account of the greatness of the powers which he was to put forth, and on account of the office of a prophet, announcing, namely, the divine will; but Jesus, on account of the mystery of his future name. Again and again he confirmed his own name, which he himself had given him, since he had bidden him thenceforth be called not an angel, nor Hoshea, but Jesus. Therefore, if both names suit the Christ of the Creator, so much the more do both not suit the Christ of a non-Creator — just as neither does the rest of the order. There must, then, be made between us, henceforth, this fixed and just objection, necessary to both parties, by which it shall be determined that there ought to be nothing at all common to the Christ of another god with the Christ of the Creator. For the diversity must be defended by you, just as it must be fought against by us; since neither will you be able to prove that the Christ of another god has come, unless you have shown him far other than the Christ of the Creator, nor can we claim him for the Creator, unless we have shown him such as is determined by the Creator. Concerning the names we have now drawn our defences. I claim Christ for myself; I defend Jesus for myself.

Let us compare the rest of his order with the Scriptures. Whatever that little body of his may be — since it both had a state and was beheld — if inglorious, if ignoble, if without honour, mine will be the Christ; for such was he announced in state and aspect. Isaiah is here again: "We announced," he says, "in his presence: as a little child, as a root in a thirsting earth; and he has no comeliness nor glory, and we saw him, and he had no comeliness nor beauty, but his appearance was without honour, failing beyond all men." Just as also the Father's voice above to the Son: "As many shall be astonished at thee, so shall thy form be without glory from men." For even if "seasonable in beauty beyond the sons of men," in David above — yet in that allegorical state of spiritual grace, when he is girt with the sword of the word, which is truly his comeliness and beauty and glory. Otherwise, in an incorporeal state, in the same prophet he is a worm even and not a man, the shame of man and the outcast of the people. Nor does he announce his inner quality to be of this sort. For if the fullness of the spirit settled in him, I acknowledge the rod from the root of Jesse. Its flower will be my Christ, upon whom, according to Isaiah, rested the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of acknowledgement and piety, the spirit of the fear of God. For to no man could this diversity of spiritual evidences have belonged except in Christ — likened to a flower for the grace of the spirit, but reckoned from the stock of Jesse, to be counted thence through Mary. But I demand, of set purpose: if you grant him the whole bent of humility and patience and tranquillity, will he, on the strength of these, be the Christ of Isaiah? "A man under stroke, and knowing how to bear weakness, who was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before the shearer opened not his mouth"; who neither strove nor cried, nor was his voice heard abroad; who did not break the bruised reed — that is, the shattered faith of the Jews; who did not quench the burning flax — that is, the momentary ardour of the Gentiles. He can be none other than the one foretold. His act must be recognized by the rule of the Scriptures, distinguished, unless I am mistaken, by a twofold operation: of preaching and of power. But concerning both titles I will so arrange it that — since it has been resolved to discuss Marcion's gospel too — we shall defer to that point, as to the matter actually in hand, the species of doctrines and signs. Here, however, let us in general work off the order we have begun, teaching that meanwhile Christ is announced a preacher through Isaiah: "For who," he says, "among you fears God, and will hearken to the voice of his Son?" Likewise a healer. "For he himself," he says, "took away our weaknesses, and bore our infirmities."

Concerning his end, plainly, I think, they bring in difficulty when challenged, denying that the passion of the cross was proclaimed concerning the Christ of the Creator, 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 that hangs upon a tree." But the sense of this curse I defer, worthy of the sole proclamation of the cross, about which the inquiry now chiefly turns, since in other respects the proof of the facts comes before the discussion of the reason. Concerning the figures I will first instruct you. And surely it was above all fitting that this mystery should be figured in the proclamation — by how much it was incredible, by so much the more bound to be a scandal if it were proclaimed nakedly; and by how much it was magnificent, by so much the more to be overshadowed, so that the difficulty of understanding might seek the grace of God. And so, first of all, Isaac, when, given over by his father for a victim, he himself carried the wood for himself, even then marked out the death of Christ — yielded by the Father to be a victim and bearing the wood of his passion. Joseph too himself figures Christ, and not by this alone (that I may not delay the course): that he suffered persecution from his brothers for the grace of God, just as Christ too from the Jews, his brothers after the flesh, when he is blessed by his father even in these words: "His comeliness is that of a bull, his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them shall he winnow the nations alike, even to the farthest part of the earth." Surely no rhinoceros was destined as the unicorn, nor a minotaur as the two-horned; but Christ was signified in him — a bull, for his twofold arrangement, to some fierce as a judge, to others mild as a saviour, whose horns would be the extremities of the cross. For even in the cross-beam, which is a part of the cross, the extremities are called horns; while the unicorn is the middle stake of the upright post. By this power of the cross, then, and in this manner horned, he now winnows all the nations through faith, lifting them from earth to heaven; and then he will winnow them by judgement, casting them down from heaven to earth. The same will be also elsewhere a bull, in the same Scripture, when Jacob is spiritually interpreted concerning Simeon and Levi, that is, concerning the scribes and Pharisees — for from them is derived the descent of these men. "Simeon and Levi accomplished iniquity out of their own heresy" — by which, namely, they persecuted Christ. "Into their council let not my soul come, and upon their station let not my inwards lean; for in their indignation they slew men" — that is, the prophets — "and in their concupiscence they hamstrung a bull" — that is, Christ, whom, after the slaying of the prophets, they raged against by fastening his sinews, namely, with nails. Otherwise it is idle, if after men slain he reproaches them with the slaughter of some ox. And now Moses — why, precisely then, when Joshua was fighting against Amalek, did he pray sitting with hands outspread, when in matters so alarming he ought rather to have commended his prayer with knees bowed and hands smiting the breast and face rolling on the ground — unless because there, where the name of the Lord was contending (to contend one day against the devil), the posture of the cross too was necessary, by which Joshua was to carry off the victory? And again, the same Moses — after the likeness of every thing had been forbidden — why did he set forth a brazen serpent placed upon a tree, in the posture of one hanging, for a saving spectacle? Was he not here too intending the power of the Lord's cross, by which the serpent, the devil, was published, and to everyone wounded by the spiritual serpents, yet looking upon it and believing in it, healing of the bites of sins and salvation thence were proclaimed?

Come now, if you have read in David, "The Lord reigned from a tree," I wait to learn what you understand. Unless perhaps you take it to mean some woodland king of the Jews, and not Christ — who from that time reigned from the wood of the cross, having conquered death. For even if death reigned from Adam unto Christ, why should not Christ be said to have reigned from a tree, who, dead from the wood of the cross, shut out the kingdom of death? Likewise also Isaiah: "Because," he says, "a child is born to us." What new thing, if he does not speak of the Son of God? "And given to us, whose dominion has come upon his own shoulder." What king of all bears the insignia of his power on his shoulder, and not either a diadem on his head or a sceptre in his hand or some mark of his proper robe? But the only new king of the new ages, Christ Jesus, lifted up the power and the loftiness of his new glory upon his shoulder, namely the cross — so that, according to the prophecy above, the Lord might thenceforth reign from a tree. This tree Jeremiah too suggests to you, preaching to the Jews who would say, "Come, let us cast wood upon his bread" — surely upon his body. For so did God in your gospel too reveal it, calling his body bread — so that from this also you may understand that he gave to his body the figure of bread, whose body of old the prophet figured under bread, the Lord himself afterward interpreting this mystery. If you still seek the proclamation of the Lord's cross, the twenty-first psalm can now sufficiently satisfy you, containing the whole passion of Christ, who even then sang his own glory: "They pierced," he says, "my hands and feet" — which is the proper atrocity 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 tips of the cross, as we showed above. Which cross neither David himself suffered, nor any king of the Jews — lest you should think that the passion of some other is foretold than of him who alone was so signally crucified by the people. Now, even if heretical hardness has spurned and mocked all these interpretations, I will grant it that no cross of Christ was signified by the Creator — because not even from this will it prove that he who was crucified is another. Unless perhaps it should show this end of his foretold by its own god, so that a diversity of passions, and through this of persons too, may be claimed from the diversity of proclamations. But, since not even his Christ has been proclaimed, far less his cross, the prophecy of death alone suffices for my Christ. For from the fact that the manner of his death was not published, it could have come also by the cross — to be then assigned to another, if it had been foretold concerning another. Unless indeed he will not even have the death of my Christ foretold — whereby let him blush the more, if he announces his own Christ dead, whom he denies to have been born, but denies mine mortal, whom he confesses capable of being born. But both the death and the burial and the resurrection of my Christ I wish to show with the single voice of Isaiah, who says, "His burial has been taken from the midst." For he would not have been buried unless dead, nor his burial taken from the midst except by resurrection. In short, he subjoined: "Therefore he shall have many for an inheritance, and shall divide the spoils of many, because his soul was delivered unto death." For the cause of this grace is shown — to be recompensed, namely, for the injury of death. Equally is it shown that he was to obtain these things on account of death — after death, surely, to obtain them through resurrection.

It suffices to have run through these matters of Christ's order thus far in the meantime — by which, proved such as he was announced, he ought to be held none other than the one who was so announced; so that now, from this harmony of his affairs and the Creator's Scriptures, faith is to be restored to those too which, owing to diverse opinions, are either brought into doubt or denied. We now further build upon them also the equal points from the Creator's Scriptures, whatever was foresung as to happen after Christ. For the arrangement would not be found discharged, if he had not come, after whom it was to come to pass. Look at all the nations emerging thenceforth from the gulf of human error to the Creator God, to the God Christ, and, if you dare, deny that it was foretold. But at once the Father's promise will meet you in the psalms: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession." Nor will you be able to claim him for the son of David rather than for Christ, or claim the ends of the earth as promised rather to David — who reigned within the single nation of the Jews — than to Christ, who has now taken the whole world by the faith of his gospel. So too through Isaiah: "Behold, I have given thee for a covenant of the race, for a light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind" — surely of the wandering — "to loose from their bonds the bound" — that is, to free from their sins — "and from the prison-cell" — that is, of death — "those sitting in darkness" — namely of ignorance. If these things come to pass through Christ, they will have been foretold of none other than him through whom they come to pass. So too elsewhere: "Behold, I have set him a testimony to the nations, a prince and ruler of nations; nations who know thee not shall call upon thee, and peoples shall flee to thee for refuge." Nor will you interpret these of David, because he premised, "And I will arrange for you an everlasting arrangement, the holy and faithful things of David." And yet rather from this you ought to understand Christ as reckoned from David in fleshly descent, on account of the registration of Mary the virgin. For concerning this promise it is sworn in the psalm to David: "Of the fruit of thy womb will I set upon thy throne." Whose is this womb? David's own? Surely not. For David was not to give birth. But neither his wife's. For he would not have said, "Of the fruit of thy womb," but rather, "Of the fruit of thy wife's womb." But by saying "his womb," it remains that he showed someone of his race, of whose womb the flesh of Christ would be the fruit, which flowered from the womb of Mary. And therefore he named only "the fruit of the womb," as properly of the womb, as of the womb alone, not also of the man; and the womb itself he referred to David, the head of the race and father of the family. For since he could not assign the virgin's womb to a man, he assigned that womb to the father. Thus the new arrangement which is found today in Christ will be that which the Creator then promised, calling "the holy and faithful things of David" the things which were Christ's, because Christ is of David — nay, his very flesh will be the holy and faithful thing of David, now holy by religion and faithful by resurrection. For Nathan too, the prophet, in the first book of Kingdoms, makes a profession to David concerning his seed. "Which shall be," he says, "of his own belly." If you expound this simply of Solomon, you will make me laugh; for it will seem that David gave birth to Solomon. Or is Christ here too signified — the seed of David out of that belly which was of David, that is, of Mary? For because Christ rather was to build the house of God — namely a holy man, in whom, as in a better temple, the Spirit of God should dwell — Christ rather was to be held the Son of God than Solomon the son of David. In short, both an eternal throne and an eternal kingdom suit Christ rather than Solomon, a temporal king. But also from Christ the mercy of God did not depart, whereas to Solomon even the wrath of God came near, after his luxury and idolatry. For God raised up against him Satan, an Idumean enemy. Since, then, none of these things suits Solomon, but only Christ, the reason of our interpretations will be sure — the very outcome of things proving those which appear foretold concerning Christ. And so in him will be the holy and faithful things of David. Him God set a testimony to the nations, not David; a prince and ruler of nations, not David, who ruled over Israel alone. Christ today the nations call upon, who knew him not, and the peoples flee today for refuge to Christ, whom formerly they knew not. That cannot be called future which you see being done.

So neither can you maintain that thrust of yours toward a difference of two Christs — as though the Jewish Christ were destined by the Creator for the people alone, to be gathered out of dispersion, but yours bestowed by the supremely good god for the freeing of the whole human race — since, after all, the Christians of the Creator are found earlier than those of Marcion, all peoples having been called from that time into his kingdom from which "God reigned from a tree," with no Cerdo as yet, far less a Marcion. But you, refuted concerning the calling of the nations, turn now to proselytes. Do you ask who pass over from the nations to the Creator, when the proselytes too, of a diverse and proper condition, are named separately by the prophet? "Behold," says Isaiah, "proselytes through me shall come to thee" — showing that the proselytes too were to come through Christ to God. And the nations — which is what we are — likewise had their own naming, as hoping in Christ. "And in his name," he says, "shall the nations hope." But the proselytes, whom you substitute in the proclamation of the nations, are not wont to hope in the name of Christ, but in the order of Moses, from whom their instruction comes. For the rest, the choosing of the nations arose from the last days. In the same words Isaiah says: "And it shall be in the last days that the mountain of the Lord shall be manifest" — surely the loftiness of God — "and the house of God upon the highest mountains" — surely Christ, the catholic temple of God, in which God is worshipped, set above all eminences of virtues and powers; "and all the nations shall come to it, and many shall go, and shall say, Come, let us ascend into the mountain of the Lord, and into the house of the God of Jacob, and he will announce to us his way, and we will walk in it: for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem." This way of the new law will be the gospel, and of the new word in Christ, now no longer in Moses. "And he shall judge among the nations" — concerning their error, namely. "And he shall reprove a numerous people" — first of all the Jews themselves and the proselytes. "And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their pikes into pruning-hooks" — that is, the dispositions of injurious minds and hostile tongues and all malice and blasphemy they shall convert into pursuits of modesty and peace. "And nation shall not lift up sword against nation" — surely of discord. "And they shall learn war no more" — that is, to carry out enmities; so that here too you may learn that Christ was not promised mighty in war, but a peace-bringer. Either deny that these things were foretold, when they are seen before your eyes; or that they are fulfilled, when they are read; or, if you deny neither, then they will be fulfilled in him concerning whom they were foretold. For look further at the very entry and course of the calling among the nations, who from the last days approach the Creator God, not at the proselytes, whose choosing is rather from the first days. For indeed the apostles brought in this faith.

You have the work of the apostles too foretold. "How seasonable the feet of those who evangelize peace, who evangelize good things" — not war nor evils. The psalm too answered: "Into all the earth their sound has gone out, and to the ends of the earth their voices" — namely of those carrying about the law gone forth from Sion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, so that what is written might come to pass: "All who are far from my justice have drawn near to my justice and truth." When the apostles girt themselves for this business, they renounced the elders and rulers and priests of the Jews. "Was it not above all," he says, "as preachers of another god?" And yet of the very same whose Scripture they were at that moment fulfilling. "Depart, depart," cries Isaiah, "go out from thence, and touch not the unclean thing" — blasphemy, namely, against Christ. "Go out from the midst of it" — namely of the synagogue; "be separated, you who carry the vessels of the Lord." For now, according to the things written above, the Lord had revealed his Holy One by his arm — that is, by his power, Christ — in the sight of the nations, that all the nations and the ends of the earth might see the salvation that was from God. So too, turning aside from Judaism itself, when they exchanged the bonds and burdens of the law for the liberty of the gospel, they were carrying out the psalm: "Let us burst their chains and cast off from us their yoke" — certainly after the nations were in tumult and the peoples meditated vain things; "the kings of the earth stood up, and the princes were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ." What did the apostles suffer thereafter? "Every iniquity," you say, "of persecutions" — from the men of the Creator, namely, as adversaries of him whom they preached. And why does the Creator, if he was an adversary of Christ, not only foretell that his apostles should suffer this, but even reproach it? For he would neither foretell the order of another god, of whom he was ignorant, as you would have it, nor would he reproach what he himself had procured. "See how the just man perishes, and no one lays it to heart, and just men are taken away, and no one regards it. For from the face of injustice the just man has been taken away." Who, but Christ? "Come," they say, "let us take away the just man, because he is unprofitable to us." Premising this, then, and subjoining accordingly that Christ too suffered, he prophesied that his just ones equally would suffer the same — both the apostles and thereafter all the faithful — marked, namely, with that sign concerning which Ezekiel: "The Lord says to me, Pass through the midst of the gate, in the midst of Jerusalem, and set the sign Tau on the foreheads of the men." For this is the letter Tau of the Greeks, but ours, T — the figure of the cross, which he foreshowed to be in the future on our foreheads, in the true and catholic Jerusalem, in which the brothers of Christ — namely the sons of God — were to render glory to God the Father, as the twenty-first psalm sings in the person of Christ himself to the Father: "I will declare thy name to my brothers, in the midst of the Church I will sing a hymn to thee." For what was to be done today in his name and spirit, he rightly proclaimed would be done by himself. And a little below: "From thee is my praise in the great Church." And in the sixty-seventh: "In the churches bless the Lord God"; so that equally might concur the prophecy of Malachi: "My will is not in you, says the Lord, and your sacrifices I will not accept; for from the rising of the sun even to its setting my name is glorified among the nations, and in every place a sacrifice is offered to my name, even a clean sacrifice" — namely the rendering of glory, and blessing, and praise, and hymns. All which, since they are found in you too — both the sealing of foreheads, and the mysteries of the churches, and the cleanness of the sacrifices — you ought now to burst out and say that the Spirit of the Creator prophesied to your Christ.

Now, since with the Jews you deny that their Christ has come, recognize also their own end, which they were foretold to bring upon themselves after Christ, on account of the impiety by which they both despised and slew him. For first, from the day on which, according to Isaiah, "man cast away his abominations of gold and silver, which they had made to adore vain and noxious things" — that is, from the time when the human race, the truth made clear through Christ, cast away its idols. See whether what follows has been discharged: "For the Lord of Sabaoth has taken away from Judea and from Jerusalem, among the rest, both the prophet and the wise architect" — namely the Holy Spirit, who builds the Church, namely the temple and house and city of God. For thenceforth the grace of God ceased among them, and it was commanded to the clouds that they should not rain rain upon the vineyard Sorek — that is, the heavenly benefits, that they should not come forth to the house of Israel. For it had brought forth thorns, of which it had crowned the Lord, and not justice, but a clamour, by which it had extorted him to the cross. And thus, the dews of the spiritual gifts being withdrawn, the law and the prophets reached only to John. Then, when, with such perseverance of fury, the name of the Lord too was blasphemed through them — as it is written: "Because of you my name is blasphemed among the nations" (for from them began the infamy) — and in the intervening time, from Tiberius to Vespasian, they had not understood repentance, their land was made desolate, their cities burned up, their region devoured before their own eyes by strangers, the daughter of Sion forsaken and like a watchtower in a vineyard or a hut in a cucumber-field — from that time, namely, when Israel did not know the Lord, and the people did not understand him, but forsook him, and provoked to indignation the Holy One of Israel. So too the conditional threat of the sword: "If you will not, and will not hearken to me, the sword shall devour you" — proved that it was Christ whom by not hearing they perished. He who also, in the fifty-ninth psalm, demands their dispersion from the Father: "Scatter them in thy power." Who again, through Isaiah, declaiming against their burning up, says, "Because of me these things have come upon you; you shall sleep in anguish." Quite idly, if they did not suffer these things on account of him who had pronounced that they would suffer on his account, but on account of the Christ of another god. And yet, I say, you say that the Christ of another god was driven to the cross by the virtues and powers of the Creator, as by rivals. But behold, he is shown defended by the Creator — and "the worst men were given for his burial," namely those who had asserted that it was stolen away, "and the rich for his death," namely those who had both bought the betrayal from Judas and the false testimony of the stolen corpse from the soldiers. Therefore, either these things did not befall the Jews on account of him — but you are refuted, since both the sense of the Scriptures and the outcome of events and the order of the times conspire — or, if they befell on account of him, the Creator could not have avenged any but his own Christ, intending rather to reward Judas, if they had slain the adversary of his Lord. Certainly, if the Christ of the Creator has not yet come, on whose account these things are proclaimed as about to be suffered, then when he comes they will suffer them. And where then will be the daughter of Sion to be forsaken, which today is nowhere? Where the cities to be burned, which already lie in heaps? Where the dispersion of the nation, which is already in exile? Restore the state of Judea which the Christ of the Creator may find, and then contend that another came. But truly, what kind of thing is it that, by means of his own heaven, he admitted one whom he was to slay in his own land — the more honourable and glorious region of his kingdom being violated, his very court and citadel trodden under foot? Or did he rather affect this? Plainly a jealous god — yet he conquered. Blush, you who believe in a conquered god. What will you hope from one who could not protect himself? For either he was overpowered through weakness by the virtues and men of the Creator, or through malice, that he might only fasten upon them so great a guilt by his endurance.

"Nay," you say, "I hope from him what he himself does for the testimony of the difference: the kingdom of God of an eternal and heavenly possession." But your Christ promises to the Jews the former state, by the restitution of their land, and, after the course of life is run, refreshment in the bosom of Abraham among the dead. A most good god, if he gives back when appeased what he had also taken away when angered! O your god, who both wounds and heals, makes evils and works peace! O god merciful even to the underworld! But concerning the bosom of Abraham in its place. As for the restitution of Judea — which the Jews themselves too, led by names of places and regions, hope for just as it is described — how an allegorical interpretation may spiritually suit it to Christ and to the Church and to its state and fruit, it would be long to pursue, and it is treated in another work, which we entitle Concerning the Hope of the Faithful; and for the present it is even idle here, because the question is not of an earthly but of a heavenly promise. For we too confess that a kingdom is promised to us on earth — but before heaven, only 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 on high; and, pronouncing our citizenship — that is, our municipality — to be in the heavens, he assigns it surely to some heavenly city. This city Ezekiel too knew, and the apostle John saw. And the word of the new prophecy, which is with our faith, testifies — so that it even foretold that the effigy of the city would be present to view before its actual representation, for a sign. In short, it was lately discharged in the eastern expedition. For it is established, by heathen witnesses too, that in Judea, for forty days, in the early hours of the morning, a city hung from heaven, the whole fabric of its walls vanishing with the advance of the day, and at other times nothing near at hand. This city we say is provided by God for the receiving of the saints at the resurrection and for their refreshing with an abundance of all good things — spiritual, surely — in compensation for those which in the world we either despised or lost. Since indeed it is both just and worthy of God that there too his servants should exult where they were also afflicted in his name. This is the rationale of the heavenly kingdom; after whose thousand years — within which space is enclosed the resurrection of the saints, who rise sooner or later according to their merits — then, the destruction of the world and the conflagration of judgement being accomplished, we shall be changed in a moment into the angelic substance, namely by that putting-on of incorruption over us, and shall be translated into the heavenly kingdom; concerning which the matter is now thus handled, as though it were not proclaimed with the Creator, and on this account proves the Christ of another god, by whom first and alone it was revealed. Learn, then, henceforth, that it was both proclaimed by the Creator and is to be believed, even without proclamation, with the Creator. What does it seem to you, when the seed of Abraham, after the first promise by which it is promised to the likeness of the sand, is destined also to the pattern of the stars — are not these the auspices both of an earthly and of a heavenly arrangement? When Isaac, blessing his son Jacob, says, "May God give thee of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth" — are these not examples of a twofold indulgence? In short, here too the structure of the blessing itself is to be noticed. For concerning Jacob — who is the figure of the later and preferred people, that is, of us — the first promise is of the dew of heaven, the second of earthly fatness. For we are first invited to heavenly things, when we are torn from the world, and so afterward are found about to obtain earthly things too. And your gospel also has it: "Seek first the kingdom of God, and these things shall be added to you." But to Esau he promises an earthly blessing, and subjoins a heavenly one out of the fatness of the earth, saying, "Thy dwelling shall be also of the dew of heaven." For the arrangement of the Jews is in Esau — of sons elder by birth and later by affection — first imbued with earthly goods through the law, afterward led to heavenly things through the gospel by believing. But when Jacob dreams of a ladder fixed firm in the earth up to heaven, with some angels ascending and others descending, and the Lord leaning above — rashly, if at all, shall we interpret that by this ladder is shown a way to heaven, by which some arrive, from which others fall — established by the Lord's judgement. But why, when he awoke and was first struck with the awe of the place, did he turn to the interpretation of the dream? For when he had said, "How terrible is this place!" he says, "It is nothing else but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." For he had seen Christ the Lord, the temple of God and the gate, the same through whom heaven is entered. And surely he would not have named "the gate of heaven" if heaven is not entered with the Creator. But there is a gate too, which both receives and leads through, paved already by Christ. Of which Amos says: "Who builds his ascent into heaven" — surely not for himself alone, but for his own too, who will be with him. "For thou shalt put them about thee," he says, "as the ornament of a bride." Thus, tending through that ascent to the heavenly kingdoms, the Spirit marvels, saying, "They fly as those who are kites, as the clouds fly, and as the young of doves" — to me, namely, simply as doves. For we shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord, according to the apostle (that son of man, namely, coming in the clouds, according to Daniel), and so we shall ever be with the Lord — in so far as we shall be both on earth and in heaven; who, on account of the ungrateful of either promise, calls the very elements to witness: "Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth." And for my part, even if no hand of heavenly hope were held out to me by Scripture so often, I should have prejudice enough of this promise too, from the fact that I already hold the earthly grace; I should expect something from heaven also, from the God of heaven as well as of earth; thus I should believe that Christ, promising loftier things, belongs to him who had promised humbler ones too — who had also made trials of greater things by small ones, who had reserved the proclamation of this kingdom (unheard-of, if at all) for Christ alone, so that by his servants earthly glory should be announced, but the heavenly by God himself. But you argue from this too another Christ, because he announces a new kingdom. First you must bring forward some example of his indulgence, lest with reason I doubt the credit of so great a promise, which you say is to be hoped for; nay, before all things, that you should prove some heaven of his whom you preach to promise heavenly things. But as it is, you call to a supper and do not show the house; you allege a kingdom and do not point out the palace. Or is it because your Christ promises a heavenly kingdom while having no heaven — just as he furnished forth a man too while having no flesh? O the all-phantom! O the sleight even of so great a promise!