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| Impossible that Marcion's Christ Should Reprove the Faithless Generation. Such Loving Consideration for Infants as the True Christ Was Apt to Shew, Also Impossible for the Other. On the Three Different Characters Confronted and Instructed by Christ in Samaria. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XXIII.—Impossible that Marcion’s Christ Should Reprove the
Faithless Generation. Such Loving Consideration for Infants as the True
Christ Was Apt to Shew, Also Impossible for the Other. On the Three
Different Characters Confronted and Instructed by Christ in
Samaria.
I take on myself the character4375
4375 Personam: “I
personate Israel.” | of Israel. Let Marcion’s Christ stand
forth, and exclaim, “O faithless generation!4376 how long shall I be with you? how long shall
I suffer you?”4377 He will immediately
have to submit to this remonstrance from me: “Whoever you are, O
stranger,4378
4378 ἐπερχόμενε.
The true Christ is ὁ
ἐρχόμενος. | first tell us who
you are, from whom you come, and what right you have over us. Thus far,
all you possess4379 belongs to the
Creator. Of course, if you come from Him, and are acting for Him, we
will bear your reproof. But if you come from some other god, I should
wish you to tell us what you have ever committed to us belonging to
yourself,4380 which it was our
duty to believe, seeing that you are upbraiding us with
‘faithlessness,’ who have never yet revealed to us your own
self. How long ago4381 did you begin to
treat with us, that you should be complaining of the delay? On what
points have you borne with us, that you should adduce4382 your patience? Like Æsop’s ass,
you are just come from the well,4383
4383 This fable is not
extant (Oehler). | and are
filling every place with your braying.” I assume,
besides,4384 the person of the
disciple, against whom he has inveighed:4385
“O perverse nation! how long shall I be with you? how long shall
I suffer you?” This outburst of his I might, of course, retort
upon him most justly in such words as these: “Whoever you are, O
stranger, first tell us who you are, from whom you come, what right you
have over us. Thus far, I suppose, you belong to the Creator, and so we
have followed you, recognising in you all things which are His. Now, if
you come from Him, we will bear your reproof. If, however, you are
acting for another, prythee tell us what you have ever conferred upon
us that is simply your own, which it had become our duty to believe,
seeing that you reproach us with ‘faithlessness,’ although
up to this moment you show us no credentials. How long since did you
begin to plead with us, that you are charging us with delay? Wherein have you
borne with us, that you should even boast of your patience? The ass has
only just arrived from Æsop’s well, and he is already
braying.” Now who would not thus have rebutted the unfairness of
the rebuke, if he had supposed its author to belong to him who had had
no right as yet to complain? Except that not even He4386
4386 Nisi quod nec ille.
This ille, of course, means the Creator’s Christ. | would have inveighed against them, if He had
not dwelt among them of old in the law and by the prophets, and with
mighty deeds and many mercies, and had always experienced them to be
“faithless.” But, behold, Christ takes4387 infants, and teaches how all ought to be
like them, if they ever wish to be greater.4388
The Creator, on the contrary,4389 let loose bears
against children, in order to avenge His prophet Elisha, who had been
mocked by them.4390 This antithesis is
impudent enough, since it throws together4391
things so different as infants4392 and
children,4393
4393 Pueros: [young
lads]. | —an age still
innocent, and one already capable of discretion—able to mock, if
not to blaspheme. As therefore God is a just God, He spared not impious
children, exacting as He does honour for every time of life, and
especially, of course, from youth. And as God is good, He so
loves infants as to have blessed the midwives in Egypt, when they
protected the infants of the Hebrews4394 which were in
peril from Pharaoh’s command.4395 Christ
therefore shares this kindness with the Creator. As indeed for
Marcion’s god, who is an enemy to marriage, how can he possibly
seem to be a lover of little children, which are simply the issue of
marriage? He who hates the seed must needs also detest the fruit. Yea,
he ought to be deemed more ruthless than the king of Egypt.4396
4396 See a like comparison
in book i. chap. xxix. p. 294. | For whereas Pharaoh forbade infants to be
brought up, he will not allow them even to be born, depriving
them of their ten months’ existence in the womb. And how much
more credible it is, that kindness to little children should be
attributed to Him who blessed matrimony for the procreation of mankind,
and in such benediction included also the promise of connubial fruit
itself, the first of which is that of infancy!4397
4397 Qui de infantia primus
est: i.e., cujus qui de infantia, etc. [Elucidation VIII.] |
The Creator, at the request of Elias, inflicts the blow4398 of fire from heaven in the case of that
false prophet (of Baalzebub).4399 I recognise herein
the severity of the Judge. And I, on the contrary, the severe
rebuke4400
4400 I translate after
Oehler’s text, which is supported by the oldest authorities.
Pamelius and Rigaltius, however, read “Christi lenitatem
increpantis eandem animadversionem,” etc. (“On the
contrary, I recognize the gentleness of Christ, who rebuked His
disciples when they,” etc.) This reading is only conjectural,
suggested by the “Christi lenitatem” of the context. | of Christ on His
disciples, when they were for inflicting4401 a
like visitation on that obscure village of the Samaritans.4402 The heretic, too, may discover that this
gentleness of Christ was promised by the selfsame severest Judge.
“He shall not contend,” says He, “nor shall His voice
be heard in the street; a bruised reed shall He not crush, and smoking
flax shall He not quench.”4403 Being of such
a character, He was of course much the less disposed to burn men. For
even at that time the Lord said to Elias,4404
4404 Compare De
Patientia, chap. xv. |
“He was not in the fire, but in the still small
voice.”4405 Well, but why does
this most humane and merciful God reject the man who offers himself to
Him as an inseparable companion?4406 If it were
from pride or from hypocrisy that he had said, “I will follow
Thee whithersoever Thou goest,’ then, by judicially reproving an
act of either pride or hypocrisy as worthy of rejection, He performed
the office of a Judge. And, of course, him whom He rejected He
condemned to the loss of not following the Saviour.4407 For as He calls to salvation him whom He
does not reject, or him whom He voluntarily invites, so does He consign
to perdition him whom He rejects. When, however, He answers the man,
who alleged as an excuse his father’s burial, “Let the dead
bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of
God,”4408 He gave a clear
confirmation to those two laws of the Creator—that in Leviticus,
which concerns the sacerdotal office, and forbids the priests to be
present at the funerals even of their parents. “The
priest,” says He, “shall not enter where there is any dead
person;4409 and for his father
he shall not be defiled”4410 ; as well as that in
Numbers, which relates to the (Nazarite) vow of separation; for there
he who devotes himself to God, among other things, is bidden “not
to come at any dead body,” not even of his father, or his mother,
or his brother.4411 Now it was, I
suppose, for the Nazarite and the priestly office that He intended this
man whom He had been
inspiring4412 to preach the
kingdom of God. Or else, if it be not so, he must be pronounced impious
enough who, without the intervention of any precept of the law,
commanded that burials of parents should be neglected by their sons.
When, indeed, in the third case before us, (Christ) forbids the man
“to look back” who wanted first “to bid his family
farewell,” He only follows out the rule4413 of
the Creator. For this (retrospection) He had been against their making,
whom He had rescued out of Sodom.4414
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