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| Chapter XXVII.—Doctrines of Cerdo and Marcion.
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Chapter XXVII.—Doctrines of Cerdo and
Marcion.
1. Cerdo was
one who took his system from the followers of Simon, and came to live at
Rome in the time of Hyginus, who held the ninth place in the episcopal
succession from the apostles downwards. He taught that the God proclaimed
by the law and the prophets was not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For the former was known, but the latter unknown; while the one also was
righteous, but the other benevolent.
2. Marcion of Pontus succeeded him, and
developed his doctrine. In so doing, he advanced the most daring
blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the
prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to take delight in
war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself. But
Jesus being derived from that father who is above the God that made the
world, and coming into Judæa in the times of Pontius Pilate the
governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Cæsar, was manifested in
the form of a man to those who were in Judæa, abolishing the prophets
and the law, and all the works of that God who made the world, whom also
he calls Cosmocrator. Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is
according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation
of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord,
in which the Lord is recorded as most dearly confessing that the Maker of
this universe is His Father. He likewise persuaded his disciples that he
himself was more worthy of credit than are those apostles who have handed
down the Gospel to us, furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a
fragment of it. In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul,
removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who made the
world, to the effect that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
also those passages from the prophetical writings which the apostle
quotes, in order to teach us that they announced beforehand the coming of
the Lord.
3. Salvation will be the attainment only of those souls
which had learned his doctrine; while the body, as having been taken from
the earth, is incapable of sharing in salvation. In addition to his
blasphemy against God Himself, he advanced this also, truly speaking as
with the mouth of the devil, and saying all things in direct opposition
to the truth,—that Cain, and those like him, and the Sodomites,
and the Egyptians, and others like them, and, in fine, all the nations
who walked in all sorts of abomination, were saved by the Lord, on His
descending into Hades, and on their running unto Him, and that they
welcomed Him into their kingdom. But the serpent2958
| 2958 [Comp. cap. xxv. 3.] | which
was in Marcion declared that Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and those other
righteous men who sprang2959
| 2959
We here follow the amended version proposed by the Benedictine
editor. | from the patriarch Abraham, with all the prophets,
and those who were pleasing to God, did not partake in salvation. For
since these men, he says, knew that their God was constantly tempting
them, so now they suspected that He was tempting them, and did not run to
Jesus, or believe His announcement: and for this reason he declared that
their souls remained in Hades.
4. But since this man is the only one who
has dared openly to mutilate the Scriptures, and unblushingly above all
others to inveigh against God, I purpose specially to refute him,
convicting
him out of his own writings; and, with the help
of God, I shall overthrow him out of those2960
| 2960 A promise never fulfilled: comp. book
iii. 12, and Euseb., Hist. Eccl., v. 8. | discourses of
the Lord and the apostles, which are of authority with him, and of which
he makes use. At present, however, I have simply been led to mention him,
that thou mightest know that all those who in any way corrupt the truth,
and injuriously affect the preaching of the Church, are the disciples and
successors of Simon Magus of Samaria. Although they do not confess the
name of their master, in order all the more to seduce others, yet they do
teach his doctrines. They set forth, indeed, the name of Christ Jesus as
a sort of lure, but in various ways they introduce the impieties of
Simon; and thus they destroy multitudes, wickedly disseminating their own
doctrines by the use of a good name, and, through means of its sweetness
and beauty, extending to their hearers the bitter and malignant poison of
the serpent, the great author of apostasy.2961
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