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| This Perverse Doctrine Deprives Baptism of All Its Grace. If Marcion Be Right, the Sacrament Would Confer No Remission of Sins, No Regeneration, No Gift of the Spirit. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter XXVIII.—This Perverse Doctrine Deprives Baptism of
All Its Grace. If Marcion Be Right, the Sacrament Would Confer No
Remission of Sins, No Regeneration, No Gift of the Spirit.
And what will happen to him after he is cast away?
He will, they say, be thrown into the Creator’s fire. Then
has no remedial provision been made (by their god) for the purpose of
banishing those that sin against him, without resorting to the cruel
measure of delivering them over to the Creator? And what will the
Creator then do? I suppose He will prepare for them a hell doubly
charged with brimstone,2666
2666 Sulphuratiorem
gehennam. | as for blasphemers
against Himself; except indeed their god in his zeal, as perhaps might
happen, should show clemency to his rival’s revolted subjects.
Oh, what a god is this! everywhere perverse; nowhere rational; in all
cases vain; and therefore a nonentity!2667 —in whose state, and condition, and
nature, and every appointment, I see no coherence and consistency; no,
not even in the very sacrament of his faith! For what end does baptism
serve, according to him? If the remission of sins, how will he make it
evident that he remits sins, when he affords no evidence that he
retains them? Because he would retain them, if he performed the
functions of a judge. If deliverance from death, how could he deliver
from death, who has not delivered to death? For he must
have delivered the sinner to death, if he had from the beginning
condemned sin. If the regeneration of man, how can he regenerate, who
has never generated? For the repetition of an act is impossible to him,
by whom nothing any time has been ever done. If the bestowal of the
Holy Ghost, how will he bestow the Spirit, who did not at first impart
the life? For the life is in a sense the supplement2668
2668 Suffectura. A
something whereon the Spirit may operate; so that the Spirit has a
præfectura over the anima. [Kaye, p. 179.] | of the Spirit. He therefore seals man, who
had never been unsealed2669
2669 Resignatum. Tertullian
here yields to his love of antithesis, and makes almost nonsense of
signo and resigno. The latter verb has the meaning
violate (in opposition to signo, in the phrase
virgo signata, a pure unviolated virgin). | in respect of
him;2670 washes man, who had never been defiled so
far as he was concerned;2671 and into this
sacrament of salvation wholly plunges that flesh which is beyond the
pale of salvation!2672 No farmer will
irrigate ground that will yield him no fruit in return, except he be as
stupid as Marcion’s god. Why then impose sanctity upon our most
infirm and most unworthy flesh, either as a burden or as a glory? What
shall I say, too, of the uselessness of a discipline which sanctifies
what is already sanctified? Why burden the infirm, or glorify the
unworthy? Why not remunerate with salvation what it burdens or else
glorifies? Why keep back from a work its due reward, by not
recompensing the flesh with salvation? Why even permit the honour of
sanctity in it to die?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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