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Anti-Marcion
Who shall be invoked as the Lord of heaven, that does not first show Himself[4465] to have been the maker thereof? For He says, “I thank thee, (O Father,) and own Thee, Lord of heaven, because those things which had been hidden from the wise and prudent, Thou has revealed unto babes.”[4466] What things are these? And whose? And by whom hidden? And by whom revealed? If it was by Marcion’s god that they were hidden and revealed, it was an extremely iniquitous proceeding;[4467] for nothing at all had he ever produced[4468] in which anything could have been hidden—no prophecies, no parables, no visions, no evidences[4469] of things, or words, or names, obscured by allegories and figures, or cloudy enigmas, but he had concealed the greatness even of himself, which he was with all his might revealing by his Christ. Now in what respect had the wise and prudent done wrong,[4470] that God should be hidden from them, when their wisdom and prudence had been insufficient to come to the knowledge of Him? No way had been provided by himself,[4471] by any declaration of his works, or any vestiges whereby they might become[4472] wise and prudent. However, if they had even failed in any duty towards a god whom they knew not, suppose him now at last to be known still they ought not to have found a jealous god in him who is introduced as unlike the Creator. Therefore, since he had neither provided any materials in which he could have hidden anything, nor had any offenders from whom he could have hidden himself: since, again, even if he had had any, he ought not to have hidden himself from them, he will not now be himself the revealer, who was not previously the concealer; so neither will any be the Lord of heaven nor the Father of Christ but He in whom all these attributes consistently meet.[4473] For He conceals by His preparatory apparatus of prophetic obscurity, the understanding of which is open to faith (for “if ye will not believe, ye shall not understand”[4474]); and He had offenders in those wise and prudent ones who would not seek after God, although He was to be discovered in His so many and mighty works,[4475] or who rashly philosophized about Him, and thereby furnished to heretics their arts;[4476] and lastly, He is a jealous God. Accordingly,[4477] that which Christ thanks God for doing, He long ago[4478] announced by Isaiah: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent will I hide.”[4479] So in another passage He intimates both that He has concealed, and that He will also reveal: “I will give unto them treasures that have been hidden, and secret ones will I discover to them.”[4480] And again: “Who else shall scatter the tokens of ventriloquists,[4481] and the devices of those who divine out of their own heart; turning wise men backward, and making their counsels foolish?”[4482] Now, if He has designated His Christ as an enlightener of the Gentiles, saying, “I have set thee for a light of the Gentiles;”[4483] and if we understand these to be meant in the word babes[4484]—as having been once dwarfs in knowledge and infants in prudence, and even now also babes in their lowliness of faith—we shall of course more easily understand how He who had once hidden “these things,” and promised a revelation of them through Christ, was the same God as He who had now revealed them unto babes. Else, if it was Marcion’s god who revealed the things which had been formerly hidden by the Creator, it follows[4485] that he did the Creator’s work by setting forth His deeds.[4486] But he did it, say you, for His destruction, that he might refute them.[4487] Therefore he ought to have refuted them to those from whom the Creator had hidden them, even the wise and prudent. For if he had a kind intention in what he did, the gift of knowledge was due to those from whom the Creator had detained it, instead of the babes, to whom the Creator had grudged no gift. But after all, it is, I presume, the edification[4488] rather than the demolition[4489] of the law and the prophets which we have thus far found effected in Christ. “All things,” He says, “are delivered unto me of my Father.”[4490] You may believe Him, if He is the Christ of the Creator to whom all things belong; because the Creator has not delivered to a Son who is less than Himself all things, which He created by[4491] Him, that is to say, by His Word. If, on the contrary, he is the notorious stranger,[4492] what are the “all things” which have been delivered to him by the Father? Are they the Creator’s? Then the things which the Father delivered to the Son are good, and the Creator is therefore good, since all His “things” are good; whereas he[4493] is no longer good who has invaded another’s good (domains) to deliver it to his son, thus teaching robbery[4494] of another’s goods. Surely he must be a most mendacious being, who had no other means of enriching his son than by helping himself to another’s property! Or else,[4495] if nothing of the Creator’s has been delivered to him by the Father, by what right[4496] does he claim for himself (authority over) man? Or again, if man has been delivered to him, and man alone, then man is not “all things.” But Scripture clearly says that a transfer of all things has been made to the Son. If, however, you should interpret this “all” of the whole human race, that is, all nations, then the delivery of even these to the Son is within the purpose of the Creator:[4497] “I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.”[4498] If, indeed, he has some things of his own, the whole of which he might give to his son, along with the man of the Creator, then show some one thing of them all, as a sample, that I may believe; lest I should have as much reason not to believe that all things belong to him, of whom I see nothing, as I have ground for believing that even the things which I see not are His, to whom belongs the universe, which I see. But “no man knoweth who the Father is, but the Son; and who the Son is, but the Father, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him.”[4499] And so it was an unknown god that Christ preached! And other heretics, too, prop themselves up by this passage; alleging in opposition to it that the Creator was known to all, both to Israel by familiar intercourse, and to the Gentiles by nature. Well, how is it He Himself testifies that He was not known to Israel? “But Israel doth not know me, and my people doth not consider me;”[4500] nor to the Gentiles: “For, behold,” says He, “of the nations I have no man.”[4501] Therefore He reckoned them “as the drop of a bucket,”[4502] while “Sion He left as a look-out[4503] in a vineyard.”[4504] See, then, whether there be not here a confirmation of the prophet’s word, when he rebukes that ignorance of man toward God which continued to the days of the Son of man. For it was on this account that he inserted the clause that the Father is known by him to whom the Son has revealed Him, because it was even He who was announced as set by the Father to be a light to the Gentiles, who of course required to be enlightened concerning God, as well as to Israel, even by imparting to it a fuller knowledge of God. Arguments, therefore, will be of no use for belief in the rival god which may be suitable[4505] for the Creator, because it is only such as are unfit for the Creator which will be able to advance belief in His rival. If you look also into the next words, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things which ye see, for I tell you that prophets have not seen the things which ye see,”[4506] you will find that they follow from the sense above, that no man indeed had come to the knowledge of God as he ought to have done,[4507] since even the prophets had not seen the things which were being seen under Christ. Now if He had not been my Christ, He would not have made any mention of the prophets in this passage. For what was there to wonder at, if they had not seen the things of a god who had been unknown to them, and was only revealed a long time after them? What blessedness, however, could theirs have been, who were then seeing what others were naturally[4508] unable to see, since it was of things which they had never predicted that they had not obtained the sight;[4509] if it were not because they might justly[4510] have seen the things pertaining to their God, which they had even predicted, but which they at the same time[4511] had not seen? This, however, will be the blessedness of others, even of such as were seeing the things which others had only foretold. We shall by and by show, nay, we have already shown, that in Christ those things were seen which had been foretold, but yet had been hidden from the very prophets who foretold them, in order that they might be hidden also from the wise and the prudent. In the true Gospel, a certain doctor of the law comes to the Lord and asks, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” In the heretical gospel life only is mentioned, without the attribute eternal; so that the lawyer seems to have consulted Christ simply about the life which the Creator in the law promises to prolong,[4512] and the Lord to have therefore answered him according to the law, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,”[4513] since the question was concerning the conditions of mere life. But the lawyer of course knew very well in what way the life which the law meant[4514] was to be obtained, so that his question could have had no relation to the life whose rules he was himself in the habit of teaching. But seeing that even the dead were now raised by Christ, and being himself excited to the hope of an eternal life by these examples of a restored[4515] one, he would lose no more time in merely looking on (at the wonderful things which had made him) so high in hope.[4516] He therefore consulted him about the attainment of eternal life. Accordingly, the Lord, being Himself the same,[4517] and introducing no new precept other than that which relates above all others[4518] to (man’s) entire salvation, even including the present and the future life,[4519] places before him[4520] the very essence[4521] of the law—that he should in every possible way love the Lord his God. If, indeed, it were only about a lengthened life, such as is at the Creator’s disposal, that he inquired and Christ answered, and not about the eternal life, which is at the disposal of Marcion’s god, how is he to obtain the eternal one? Surely not in the same manner as the prolonged life. For in proportion to the difference of the reward must be supposed to be also the diversity of the services. Therefore your disciple, Marcion,[4522] will not obtain his eternal life in consequence of loving your God, in the same way as the man who loves the Creator will secure the lengthened life. But how happens it that, if He is to be loved who promises the prolonged life, He is not much more to be loved who offers the eternal life? Therefore both one and the other life will be at the disposal of one and the same Lord; because one and the same discipline is to be followed[4523] for one and the other life. What the Creator teaches to be loved, that must He necessarily maintain[4524] also by Christ,[4525] for that rule holds good here, which prescribes that greater things ought to be believed of Him who has first lesser proofs to show, than of him for whom no preceding smaller presumptions have secured a claim to be believed in things of higher import. It matters not[4526] then, whether the word eternal has been interpolated by us.[4527] It is enough for me, that the Christ who invited men to the eternal—not the lengthened—life, when consulted about the temporal life which he was destroying, did not choose to exhort the man rather to that eternal life which he was introducing. Pray, what would the Creator’s Christ have done, if He who had made man for loving the Creator did not belong to the Creator? I suppose He would have said that the Creator was not to be loved!
When in a certain place he had been praying to that Father above,[4528] looking up with insolent and audacious eyes to the heaven of the Creator, by whom in His rough and cruel nature he might have been crushed with hail and lightning—just as it was by Him contrived that he was (afterwards) attached to a cross[4529] at Jerusalem—one of his disciples came to him and said, “Master, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” This he said, forsooth, because he thought that different prayers were required for different gods! Now, he who had advanced such a conjecture as this should first show that another god had been proclaimed by Christ. For nobody would have wanted to know how to pray, before he had learned whom he was to pray to. If, however, he had already learned this, prove it. If you find nowhere any proof, let me tell you[4530] that it was to the Creator that he asked for instruction in prayer, to whom John’s disciples also used to pray. But, inasmuch as John had introduced some new order of prayer, this disciple had not improperly presumed to think that he ought also to ask of Christ whether they too must not (according to some special rule of their Master) pray, not indeed to another god, but in another manner. Christ accordingly[4531] would not have taught His disciple prayer before He had given him the knowledge of God Himself. Therefore what He actually taught was prayer to Him whom the disciple had already known. In short, you may discover in the import[4532] of the prayer what God is addressed therein. To whom can I say, “Father?”[4533] To him who had nothing to do with making me, from whom I do not derive my origin? Or to Him, who, by making and fashioning me, became my parent?[4534] Of whom can I ask for His Holy Spirit? Of him who gives not even the mundane spirit;[4535] or of Him “who maketh His angels spirits,” and whose Spirit it was which in the beginning hovered upon the waters.[4536] Whose kingdom shall I wish to come—his, of whom I never heard as the king of glory; or His, in whose hand are even the hearts of kings? Who shall give me my daily[4537] bread? Shall it be he who produces for me not a grain of millet-seed;[4538] or He who even from heaven gave to His people day by day the bread of angels?[4539] Who shall forgive me my trespasses?[4540] He who, by refusing to judge them, does not retain them; or He who, unless He forgives them, will retain them, even to His judgment? Who shall suffer us not to be led into temptation? He before whom the tempter will never be able to tremble; or He who from the beginning has beforehand condemned[4541] the angel tempter? If any one, with such a form,[4542] invokes another god and not the Creator, he does not pray; he only blasphemes.[4543] In like manner, from whom must I ask that I may receive? Of whom seek, that I may find? To whom knock, that it may be opened to me?[4544] Who has to give to him that asks, but He to whom all things belong, and whose am I also that am the asker? What, however, have I lost before that other god, that I should seek of him and find it. If it be wisdom and prudence, it is the Creator who has hidden them. Shall I resort to him, then, in quest of them? If it be health[4545] and life, they are at the disposal of the Creator. Nor must anything be sought and found anywhere else than there, where it is kept in secret that it may come to light. So, again, at no other door will I knock than at that out of which my privilege has reached me.[4546] In fine, if to receive, and to find, and to be admitted, is the fruit of labour and earnestness to him who has asked, and sought, and knocked, understand that these duties have been enjoined, and results promised, by the Creator. As for that most excellent god of yours, coming as he professes gratuitously to help man, who was not his (creature),[4547] he could not have imposed upon him any labour, or (endowed him with) any earnestness. For he would by this time cease to be the most excellent god, were he not spontaneously to give to every one who does not ask, and permit every one who seeks not to find, and open to every one who does not knock. The Creator, on the contrary,[4548] was able to proclaim these duties and rewards by Christ, in order that man, who by sinning had offended his God, might toil on (in his probation), and by his perseverance in asking might receive, and in seeking might find, and in knocking might enter. Accordingly, the preceding similitude[4549] represents the man who went at night and begged for the loaves, in the light of a friend and not a stranger, and makes him knock at a friend’s house and not at a stranger’s. But even if he has offended, man is more of a friend with the Creator than with the god of Marcion. At His door, therefore, does he knock to whom he had the right of access; whose gate he had found; whom he knew to possess bread; in bed now with His children, whom He had willed to be born.[4550] Even though the knocking is late in the day, it is yet the Creator’s time. To Him belongs the latest hour who owns an entire age[4551] and the end thereof. As for the new god, however, no one could have knocked at his door late, for he has hardly yet[4552] seen the light of morning. It is the Creator, who once shut the door to the Gentiles, which was then knocked at by the Jews, that both rises and gives, if not now to man as a friend, yet not as a stranger, but, as He says, “becauseof his importunity.”[4553] Importunate, however, the recent god could not have permitted any one to be in the short time (since his appearance).[4554] Him, therefore, whom you call the Creator recognise also as “Father.” It is even He who knows what His children require. For when they asked for bread, He gave them manna from heaven; and when they wanted flesh, He sent them abundance of quails—not a serpent for a fish, nor for an egg a scorpion.[4555] It will, however, appertain to Him not to give evil instead of good, who has both one and the other in His power. Marcion’s god, on the contrary, not having a scorpion, was unable to refuse to give what he did not possess; only He (could do so), who, having a scorpion, yet gives it not. In like manner, it is He who will give the Holy Spirit, at whose command[4556] is also the unholy spirit. When He cast out the “demon which was dumb”[4557] (and by a cure of this sort verified Isaiah),[4558] and having been charged with casting out demons by Beelzebub, He said, “If I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out?”[4559] By such a question what does He otherwise mean, than that He ejects the spirits by the same power by which their sons also did—that is, by the power of the Creator? For if you suppose the meaning to be, “If I by Beelzebub, etc., by whom your sons?”—as if He would reproach them with having the power of Beelzebub,—you are met at once by the preceding sentence, that “Satan cannot be divided against himself.”[4560] So that it was not by Beelzebub that even they were casting out demons, but (as we have said) by the power of the Creator; and that He might make this understood, He adds: “But if I with the finger of God cast out demons, is not the kingdom of God come near unto you?”[4561] For the magicians who stood before Pharaoh and resisted Moses called the power of the Creator “the finger of God.”[4562] It was the finger of God, because it was a sign[4563] that even a thing of weakness was yet abundant in strength. This Christ also showed, when, recalling to notice (and not obliterating) those ancient wonders which were really His own,[4564] He said that the power of God must be understood to be the finger of none other God than Him, under[4565] whom it had received this appellation. His kingdom, therefore, was come near to them, whose power was called His “finger.” Well, therefore, did He connect[4566] with the parable of “the strong man armed,” whom “a stronger man still overcame,”[4567] the prince of the demons, whom He had already called Beelzebub and Satan; signifying that it was he who was overcome by the finger of God, and not that the Creator had been subdued by another god. Besides,[4568] how could His kingdom be still standing, with its boundaries, and laws, and functions, whom, even if the whole world were left entire to Him, Marcion’s god could possibly seem to have overcome as “the stronger than He,” if it were not in consequence of His law that even Marcionites were constantly dying, by returning in their dissolution[4569] to the ground, and were so often admonished by even a scorpion, that the Creator had by no means been overcome?[4570] “A (certain) mother of the company exclaims, ‘Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked;’ but the Lord said, ‘Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.’”[4571] Now He had in precisely similar terms rejected His mother or His brethren, whilst preferring those who heard and obeyed God.[4572] His mother, however, was not here present with Him. On that former occasion, therefore, He had not denied that He was her son by birth.[4573] On hearing this (salutation) the second time, He the second time transferred, as He had done before,[4574] the “blessedness” to His disciples from the womb and the paps of His mother, from whom, however, unless He had in her (a real mother) He could not have transferred it.
I prefer elsewhere refuting[4575] the faults which the Marcionites find in the Creator. It is here enough that they are also found in Christ.[4576] Behold how unequal, inconsistent, and capricious he is! Teaching one thing and doing another, he enjoins “giving to every one that seeks;” and yet he himself refuses to give to those “who seek a sign.”[4577] For a vast age he hides his own light from men, and yet says that a candle must not be hidden, but affirms that it ought to be set upon a candlestick, that it may give light to all.[4578] He forbids cursing again, and cursing much more of course; and yet he heaps his woe upon the Pharisees and doctors of the law.[4579] Who so closely resembles my God as His own Christ? We have often already laid it down for certain,[4580] that He could not have been branded[4581] as the destroyer of the law if He had promulged another god. Therefore even the Pharisee, who invited Him to dinner in the passage before us,[4582] expressed some surprise[4583] in His presence that He had not washed before He sat down to meat, in accordance with the law, since it was the God of the law that He was proclaiming.[4584] Jesus also interpreted the law to him when He told him that they “made clean the outside of the cup and the platter, whereas their inward part was full of ravening and wickedness.” This He said, to signify that by the cleansing of vessels was to be understood before God the purification of men, inasmuch as it was about a man, and not about an unwashed vessel, that even this Pharisee had been treating in His presence. He therefore said: “You wash the outside of the cup,” that is, the flesh, “but you do not cleanse your inside part,”[4585] that is, the soul; adding: “Did not He that made the outside,” that is, the flesh, “also make the inward part,” that is to say, the soul?—by which assertion He expressly declared that to the same God belongs the cleansing of a man’s external and internal nature, both alike being in the power of Him who prefers mercy not only to man’s washing,[4586] but even to sacrifice.[4587] For He subjoins the command: “Give what ye possess as alms, and all things shall be clean unto you.”[4588] Even if another god could have enjoined mercy, he could not have done so previous to his becoming known. Furthermore, it is in this passage evident that they[4589] were not reproved concerning their God, but concerning a point of His instruction to them, when He prescribed to them figuratively the cleansing of their vessels, but really the works of merciful dispositions. In like manner, He upbraids them for tithing paltry herbs,[4590] but at the same time “passing over hospitality[4591] and the love of God.”[4592] The vocation and the love of what God, but Him by whose law of tithes they used to offer their rue and mint? For the whole point of the rebuke lay in this, that they cared about small matters in His service of course, to whom they failed to exhibit their weightier duties when He commanded them: “Thou shalt love with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, the Lord thy God, who hath called thee out of Egypt.”[4593] Besides, time enough had not yet passed to admit of Christ’s requiring so premature—nay, as yet so distasteful[4594]—a love towards a new and recent, not to say a hardly yet developed,[4595] deity. When, again, He upbraids those who caught at the uppermost places and the honour of public salutations, He only follows out the Creator’s course,[4596] who calls ambitious persons of this character “rulers of Sodom,”[4597] who forbids us “to put confidence even in princes,”[4598] and pronounces him to be altogether wretched who places his confidence in man. But whoever[4599] aims at high position, because he would glory in the officious attentions[4600] of other people, (in every such case,) inasmuch as He forbade such attentions (in the shape) of placing hope and confidence in man, He at the same time[4601] censured all who were ambitious of high positions. He also inveighs against the doctors of the law themselves, because they were “lading men with burdens grievous to be borne, which they did not venture to touch with even a finger of their own;”[4602] but not as if He made a mock of[4603] the burdens of the law with any feeling of detestation towards it. For how could He have felt aversion to the law, who used with so much earnestness to upbraid them for passing over its weightier matters, alms—giving, hospitality,[4604] and the love of God? Nor, indeed, was it only these great things (which He recognized), but even[4605] the tithes of rue and the cleansing of cups. But, in truth, He would rather have deemed them excusable for being unable to carry burdens which could not be borne. What, then, are the burdens which He censures?[4606] None but those which they were accumulating of their own accord, when they taught for commandments the doctrines of men; for the sake of private advantage joining house to house, so as to deprive their neighbour of his own; cajoling[4607] the people, loving gifts, pursuing rewards, robbing the poor of the rights of judgment, that they might have the widow for a prey and the fatherless for a spoil.[4608] Of these Isaiah also says, “Woe unto them that are strong in Jerusalem!”[4609] and again, “They that demand you shall rule over you.”[4610] And who did this more than the lawyers?[4611] Now, if these offended Christ, it was as belonging to Him that they offended Him. He would have aimed no blow at the teachers of an alien law. But why is a “woe” pronounced against them for “building the sepulchres of the prophets whom their fathers had killed?”[4612] They rather deserved praise, because by such an act of piety they seemed to show that they did not allow the deeds of their fathers. Was it not because (Christ) was jealous[4613] of such a disposition as the Marcionites denounce,[4614] visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the fourth generation? What “key,” indeed, was it which these lawyers had,[4615] but the interpretation of the law? Into the perception of this they neither entered themselves, even because they did not believe (for “unless ye believe, ye shall not understand”); nor did they permit others to enter, because they preferred to teach them for commandments even the doctrines of men. When, therefore, He reproached those who did not themselves enter in, and also shut the door against others, must He be regarded as a disparager of the law, or as a supporter of it? If a disparager, those who were hindering the law ought to have been pleased; if a supporter, He is no longer an enemy of the law.[4616] But all these imprecations He uttered in order to tarnish the Creator as a cruel Being,[4617] against whom such as offended were destined to have a “woe.” And who would not rather have feared to provoke a cruel Being,[4618] by withdrawing allegiance[4619] from Him? Therefore the more He represented the Creator to be an object of fear, the more earnestly would He teach that He ought to be served. Thus would it behove the Creator’s Christ to act.
Justly, therefore, was the hypocrisy of the Pharisees displeasing to Him, loving God as they did with their lips, but not with their heart. “Beware,” He says to the disciples, “of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy,” not the proclamation of the Creator. The Son hates those who refused obedience[4621] to the Father; nor does He wish His disciples to show such a disposition towards Him—not (let it be observed) towards another god, against whom such hypocrisy indeed might have been admissible, as that which He wished to guard His disciples against. It is the example of the Pharisees which He forbids. It was in respect of Him against whom the Pharisees were sinning that (Christ) now forbade His disciples to offend. Since, then, He had censured their hypocrisy, which covered the secrets of the heart, and obscured with superficial offices the mysteries of unbelief, because (while holding the key of knowledge) it would neither enter in itself, nor permit others to enter in, He therefore adds, “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; neither hid, which shall not be known,”[4622] in order that no one should suppose that He was attempting the revelation and the recognition of an hitherto unknown and hidden god. When He remarks also on their murmurs and taunts, in saying of Him, “This man casteth out devils only through Beelzebub,” He means that all these imputations would come forth to the light of day, and be in the mouths of men in consequence of the promulgation of the Gospel. He then turns to His disciples with these words, “I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them which can only kill the body, and after that have no more power over you.”[4623] They will, however, find Isaiah had already said, “See how the just man is taken away, and no man layeth it to heart.”[4624] “But I will show you whom ye shall fear: fear Him who, after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell” (meaning, of course, the Creator); “yea, I say unto you, fear Him.”[4625] Now, it would here be enough for my purpose that He forbids offence being given to Him whom He orders to be feared; and that He orders Him to be respected[4626] whom He forbids to be offended; and that He who gives these commands belongs to that very God for whom He procures this fear, this absence of offence, and this respect. But this conclusion I can draw also from the following words: “For I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before God.”[4627] Now they who shall confess Christ will have to be slain[4628] before men, but they will have nothing more to suffer after they have been put to death by them. These therefore will be they whom He forewarns above not to be afraid of being only killed; and this forewarning He offers, in order that He might subjoin a clause on the necessity of confessing Him: “Every one that denieth me before men shall be denied before God”[4629]—by Him, of course, who would have confessed him, if he had only confessed God. Now, He who will confess the confessor is the very same God who will also deny the denier of Himself. Again, if it is the confessor who will have nothing to fear after his violent death,[4630] it is the denier to whom everything will become fearful after his natural death. Since, therefore, that which will have to be feared after death, even the punishment of hell, belongs to the Creator, the denier, too, belongs to the Creator. As with the denier, however, so with the confessor: if he should deny God, he will plainly have to suffer from God, although from men he had nothing more to suffer after they had put him to death. And so Christ is the Creator’s, because He shows that all those who deny Him ought to fear the Creator’s hell. After deterring His disciples from denial of Himself, He adds an admonition to fear blasphemy: “Whosoever shall speak against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him.”[4631] Now, if both the remission and the retention of sin savour of a judicial God, the Holy Ghost, who is not to be blasphemed, will belong to Him, who will not forgive the blasphemy; just as He who, in the preceding passage, was not to be denied, belonged to, Him who would, after He had killed, also cast into hell. Now, since it is Christ who averts blasphemy from the Creator, I am at a loss to know in what manner His adversary[4632] could have come. Else, if by these sayings He throws a black cloud of censure[4633] over the severity of Him who will not forgive blasphemy and will kill even to hell, it follows that the very spirit of that rival god may be blasphemed with impunity, and his Christ denied; and that there is no difference, in fact, between worshipping and despising him; but that, as there is no punishment for the contempt, so there is no reward for the worship, which men need expect. When “brought before magistrates,” and examined, He forbids them “to take thought how they shall answer;” “for,” says He, “the Holy Ghost shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say.”[4634] If such an injunction[4635] as this comes from the Creator, the precept will only be His by whom an example was previously given. The prophet Balaam, in Numbers, when sent forth by king Balak to curse Israel, with whom he was commencing war, was at the same moment[4636] filled with the Spirit. Instead of the curse which he was come to pronounce, he uttered the blessing which the Spirit at that very hour inspired him with; having previously declared to the king’s messengers, and then to the king himself, that he could only speak forth that which God should put into his mouth.[4637] The novel doctrines of the new Christ are such as the Creator’s servants initiated long before! But see how clear a difference there is between the example of Moses and of Christ.[4638] Moses voluntarily interferes with brothers[4639] who were quarrelling, and chides the offender: “Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?” He is, however, rejected by him: “Who made thee a prince or a judge over us?”[4640] Christ, on the contrary, when requested by a certain man to compose a strife between him and his brother about dividing an inheritance, refused His assistance, although in so honest a cause. Well, then, my Moses is better than your Christ, aiming as he did at the peace of brethren, and obviating their wrong. But of course the case must be different with Christ, for he is the Christ of the simply good and non-judicial god. “Who,” says he, “made me a judge over you?”[4641] No other word of excuse was he able to find, without using[4642] that with which the wicked, man and impious brother had rejected[4643] the defender of probity and piety! In short, he approved of the excuse, although a bad one, by his use of it; and of the act, although a bad one, by his refusal to make peace between brothers. Or rather, would He not show His resentment[4644] at the rejection of Moses with such a word? And therefore did He not wish in a similar case of contentious brothers, to confound them with the recollection of so harsh a word? Clearly so. For He had Himself been present in Moses, who heard such a rejection—even He, the Spirit of the Creator.[4645] I think that we have already, in another passage,[4646] sufficiently shown that the glory of riches is condemned by our God, “who putteth down the mighty from their throne, and exalts the poor from the dunghill.”[4647] From Him, therefore, will proceed the parable of the rich man, who flattered himself about the increase of his fields, and to Whom God said: “Thou fool, this night shall they require thy soul of thee; then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?”[4648] It was just in the like manner that the king Hezekiah heard from Isaiah the sad doom of his kingdom, when he gloried, before the envoys of Babylon,[4649] in his treasures and the deposits of his precious things.[4650]
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