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| Preface. Reason for a New Work. Pontus Lends Its Rough Character to the Heretic Marcion, a Native. His Heresy Characterized in a Brief Invective. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
II.
The Five Books Against
Marcion.
Book I. 2320
2320 [Written A.D.
207. See Chapter xv. infra. In cap. xxix. is the token of
Montanism which denotes his impending lapse.] |
Wherein is described the god of
Marcion. He is shown to be utterly wanting in all the attributes of the
true God.
————————————
Chapter I.—Preface. Reason for a
New Work. Pontus Lends Its Rough Character to the Heretic Marcion, a
Native. His Heresy Characterized in a Brief Invective.
Whatever in times
past2321 we have wrought in opposition to Marcion, is
from the present moment no longer to be accounted of.2322 It is a new work which we are undertaking in
lieu of the old one.2323 My original tract,
as too hurriedly composed, I had subsequently superseded by a fuller
treatise. This latter I lost, before it was completely published, by
the fraud of a person who was then a brother,2324
but became afterwards an apostate. He, as it happened, had transcribed
a portion of it, full of mistakes, and then published it. The necessity
thus arose for an amended work; and the occasion of the new edition
induced me to make a considerable addition to the treatise. This
present text,2325 therefore, of my
work—which is the third as superseding2326
the second, but henceforward to be considered the first instead of the
third—renders a preface necessary to this issue of the tract
itself that no reader may be perplexed, if he should by chance fall in
with the various forms of it which are scattered about.
The Euxine Sea, as it is called, is
self-contradictory in its nature, and deceptive in its name.2327
2327 [Euxine=hospitable.
One recalls Shakespeare:
—“Like to the Pontick Sea
Whose icy current and compulsive
force
Ne’er feels retiring
ebb.”—Othel.] | As you would not account it hospitable from
its situation, so is it severed from our more civilised waters by a
certain stigma which attaches to its barbarous character. The fiercest
nations inhabit it, if indeed it can be called habitation, when
life is passed in waggons. They have no fixed abode; their life
has2328 no germ of civilization; they indulge their
libidinous desires without restraint, and for the most part
naked. Moreover, when they gratify secret lust, they hang up
their quivers on their car-yokes,2329
2329 De jugo. See Strabo
(Bohn’s trans.), vol. ii. p. 247. | to warn off
the curious and rash observer. Thus without a blush do they
prostitute their weapons of war. The dead bodies of their parents they
cut up with their sheep, and devour at their feasts. They who
have not died so as to become food for others, are thought to have died
an accursed death. Their women are not by their sex softened to
modesty. They uncover the breast, from which they suspend their
battle-axes, and prefer warfare to marriage. In their climate, too,
there is the same rude nature.2330 The day-time is
never clear, the sun never cheerful;2331 the sky is
uniformly cloudy; the whole year is wintry; the only wind that blows is
the angry North. Waters melt only by fires; their rivers flow not by
reason of the ice; their mountains are covered2332
with heaps of snow. All things are torpid, all stiff with cold. Nothing
there has the glow2333 of life, but that
ferocity which has given to scenic plays their stories of the
sacrifices2334
2334 [Iphigenia of
Euripides.] | of the Taurians,
and the loves2335
2335 [See the
Medea of Euripides.] | of the Colchians,
and the torments2336
2336 [Prometheus of
Æschylus.] | of the Caucasus.
Nothing, however, in Pontus is so barbarous and sad as the fact that Marcion was born
there, fouler than any Scythian, more roving than the
waggon-life2337
2337 Hamaxobio. This
Sarmatian clan received its name ῾Αμαξόβιοι
from its gypsy kind of life. | of the Sarmatian,
more inhuman than the Massagete, more audacious than an Amazon, darker
than the cloud,2338
2338 [I fancy there is
point in this singular, the sky of Pontus being always overcast. Cowper
says:
“There is but one cloud in the
sky,
But that doth the welkin invest,”
etc. | (of Pontus) colder
than its winter, more brittle than its ice, more deceitful than the
Ister, more craggy than Caucasus. Nay2339
more, the true Prometheus, Almighty God, is mangled2340 by Marcion’s blasphemies. Marcion is
more savage than even the beasts of that barbarous region. For what
beaver was ever a greater emasculator2341
2341 Castrator
carnis. See Pliny, N. H. viii. 47 (Bohn’s trans.
vol. ii. p. 297). |
than he who has abolished the nuptial bond? What Pontic mouse
ever had such gnawing powers as he who has gnawed the Gospels to
pieces? Verily, O Euxine, thou hast produced a monster more credible to
philosophers than to Christians. For the cynic Diogenes used to go
about, lantern in hand, at mid-day to find a man; whereas Marcion has
quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the God whom he had found.
His disciples will not deny that his first faith he held along with
ourselves; a letter of his own2342 proves this; so
that for the future2343 a heretic may from
his case2344 be designated as
one who, forsaking that which was prior, afterwards chose out for
himself that which was not in times past.2345
For in as far as what was delivered in times past and from the
beginning will be held as truth, in so far will that be
accounted heresy which is brought in later. But another brief
treatise2346
2346 He alludes to his book
De Præscriptione Hæreticorum. [Was this work
then already written? Dr. Allix thinks not. But see Kaye, p. 47.] | will maintain this
position against heretics, who ought to be refuted even without a
consideration of their doctrines, on the ground that they are heretical
by reason of the novelty of their opinions. Now, so far as any
controversy is to be admitted, I will for the time2347
2347 Interdum. [Can
it be that when all this was written (speaking of ourselves) our
author had fully lapsed from Communion with the Catholic
Church?] | (lest our compendious principle of novelty,
being called in on all occasions to our aid, should be imputed to want
of confidence) begin with setting forth our adversary’s rule of
belief, that it may escape no one what our main contention is to
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