Against Marcion

As touching the propriety of His names, it has already been seen that both of them are suitable to Him who was the first both to announce His Christ to mankind, and to give Him the further name of Jesus. The impudence, therefore, of Marcion's Christ will be evident, when he says that many will come in his name, whereas this name does not at all belong to him, since he is not the Christ and Jesus of the Creator, to whom these names do properly appertain; and more especially when he prohibits those to be received whose very equal in imposture he is, inasmuch as he (equally with them) comes in a name which belongs to another— unless it was his business to warn off from a mendaciously assumed name the disciples (of One) who, by reason of His name being properly given to Him, possessed also the verity thereof.

But when “they shall by and by come and say, I am Christ,” they will be received by you, who have already received one altogether like them. Christ, however, comes in His own name. What will you do, then, when He Himself comes who is the very Proprietor of these names, the Creator's Christ and Jesus? Will you reject Him? But how iniquitous, how unjust and disrespectful to the good God, that you should not receive Him who comes in His own name, when you have received another in His name!

Now, let us see what are the signs which He ascribes to the times. “Wars,” I observe, “and kingdom against kingdom, and nation against nation, and pestilence, and famines, and earthquakes, and fearful sights, and great signs from heaven” — all which things are suitable for a severe and terrible God. Now, when He goes on to say that “all these things must needs come to pass,” what does He represent Himself to be? The Destroyer, or the Defender of the Creator? For He affirms that these appointments of His must fully come to pass; but surely as the good God, He would have frustrated rather than advanced events so sad and terrible, if they had not been His own (decrees).

“But before all these,” He foretells that persecutions and sufferings were to come upon them, which indeed were “to turn for a testimony to them,” and for their salvation. Hear what is predicted in Zechariah: “The Lord of hosts shall protect them; and they shall devour them, and subdue them with sling-stones; and they shall drink their blood like wine, and they shall fill the bowls as it were of the altar. And the Lord shall save them in that day, even His people, like sheep; because as sacred stones they roll,” etc.

And that you may not suppose that these predictions refer to such sufferings as await them from so many wars with strangers, consider the nature (of the sufferings). In a prophecy of wars which were to be waged with legitimate arms, no one would think of enumerating stones as weapons, which are better known in popular crowds and unarmed tumults. Nobody measures the copious streams of blood which flow in war by bowlfuls, nor limits it to what is shed upon a single altar. No one gives the name of sheep to those who fall in battle with arms in hand, and while repelling force with force, but only to those who are slain, yielding themselves up in their own place of duty and with patience, rather than fighting in self-defence.

In short, as he says, “they roll as sacred stones,” and not like soldiers fight. Stones are they, even foundation stones, upon which we are ourselves edified— “built,” as St. Paul says, “upon the foundation of the apostles,” who, like “consecrated stones,” were rolled up and down exposed to the attack of all men. And therefore in this passage He forbids men “to meditate before what they answer” when brought before tribunals, even as once He suggested to Balaam the message which he had not thought of, nay, contrary to what he had thought; and promised “a mouth” to Moses, when he pleaded in excuse the slowness of his speech, and that wisdom which, by Isaiah, He showed to be irresistible: “One shall say, I am the Lord's, and shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another shall subscribe himself by the name of Israel.” Now, what plea is wiser and more irresistible than the simple and open confession made in a martyr's cause, who “prevails with God”— which is what “Israel” means? Now, one cannot wonder that He forbade “premeditation,” who actually Himself received from the Father the ability of uttering words in season: “The Lord has given to me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season (to him that is weary);” except that Marcion introduces to us a Christ who is not subject to the Father. That persecutions from one's nearest friends are predicted, and calumny out of hatred to His name, I need not again refer to. But “by patience,” says He, “you shall yourselves be saved.” Of this very patience the Psalm says, “The patient endurance of the just shall not perish for ever;” because it is said in another Psalm, “Precious (in the sight of the Lord) is the death of the just”— arising, no doubt, out of their patient endurance, so that Zechariah declares: “A crown shall be to them that endure.” But that you may not boldly contend that it was as announcers of another god that the apostles were persecuted by the Jews, remember that even the prophets suffered the same treatment of the Jews, and that they were not the heralds of any other god than the Creator. Then, having shown what was to be the period of the destruction, even “when Jerusalem should begin to be compassed with armies,” He described the signs of the end of all things: “portents in the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity— like the sea roaring— by reason of their expectation of the evils which are coming on the earth.”