Anti-Marcion

Footnotes

^[2316] [This preface and the frequent annotations of our author relieve the American editor, save very sparingly, from adding notes of his own.]

^[2317] Two works are worth mentioning in connection with this topic for their succinct and handy form, as well as satisfactory treatment of their argument: Mr. Perowne’s Norrisian prize essay, entitled The Essential Coherence of the Old and New Testaments (1858), and Sir William Page Wood’s recent work, The Continuity of Scripture, as declared by the Testimony of our Lord, and of the evangelists and apostles.

^[2318] Bishop Kaye says of Tertullian (page 62): “He is indeed the harshest and most obscure of writers, and the least capable of being accurately represented in a translation;” and he quotes the learned Ruhnken’s sentence of our author: “Latinitatis certè pessimum auctorem esse aio et confirmo.” This is surely much too sweeping. To the careful student Tertullian’s style commends itself, by and by, as suited exactly to his subject—as the terse and vigorous expression of terse and vigorous thought. Bishop Butler has been often censured for an awkward style; whereas it is a fairer criticism to say, that the arguments of the Analogy and the Sermons of Human Nature have been delivered in the language best suited to their character. This adaptation of style to matter is probably in all great authors a real characteristic of genius. A more just and favourable view is taken of Tertullian’s Latin by Niebuhr, Hist. Rom. (Schmitz), vol. v. p. 271, and his Lectures on Ancient Hist. (Schmitz), vol. ii. p. 54.

^[2319] He has also, as the reader will observe, endeavoured to distinguish, by the help of type, between the true God and Marcion’s god, printing the initials of the former, and of the pronouns referring to Him, in capitals, and those of the latter in small letters. To do this was not always an easy matter, for in many passages the argument amalgamates the two. Moreover, in the earlier portion of the work the translator fears that he may have occasionally neglected to make the distinction.

Book I. Wherein is described the god of Marcion. He is shown to be utterly wanting in all the attributes of the true God.

^[2320] [Written A.D. 207. See Chapter xv. infra. In cap. xxix. is the token of Montanism which denotes his impending lapse.]

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.

^[2321] Retro.

^[2322] Jam hinc viderit.

^[2323] Ex vetere.

^[2324] Fratris.

^[2325] Stilus.

^[2326] De.

^[2327] [Euxine=hospitable. One recalls Shakespeare:

—“Like to the Pontick Sea

Whose icy current and compulsive force