| << | Contents | >> |
Anti-Marcion
These considerations show that the entire order of God as Judge is an operative one, and (that I may express myself in worthier words) protective of His Catholic[2898] and supreme goodness, which, removed as it is from judiciary emotions, and pure in its own condition, the Marcionites refuse to acknowledge to be in one and the same Deity, “raining on the just and on the unjust, and making His sun to rise on the evil and on the good,”[2899]—a bounty which no other god at all exercises. It is true that Marcion has been bold enough to erase from the gospel this testimony of Christ to the Creator; but yet the world itself is inscribed with the goodness of its Maker, and the inscription is read by each man’s conscience. Nay, this very long-suffering of the Creator will tend to the condemnation of Marcion; that patience, (I mean,) which waits for the sinner’s repentance rather than his death, which prefers mercy to sacrifice,[2900] averting from the Ninevites the ruin which had been already denounced against them,[2901] and vouchsafing to Hezekiah’s tears an extension of his life,[2902] and restoring his kingly state to the monarch of Babylon after his complete repentance;[2903] that mercy, too, which conceded to the devotion of the people the son of Saul when about to die,[2904] and gave free forgiveness to David on his confessing his sins againstthe house of Uriah;[2905] which also restored the house of Israel as often as it condemned it, and addressed to it consolation no less frequently than reproof. Do not therefore look at God simply as Judge, but turn your attention also to examples of His conduct as the Most Good.[2906] Noting Him, as you do, when He takes vengeance, consider Him likewise when He shows mercy.[2907] In the scale, against His severity place His gentleness. When you shall have discovered both qualities to co-exist in the Creator, you will find in Him that very circumstance which induces you to think there is another God. Lastly, come and examine into His doctrine, discipline, precepts, and counsels. You will perhaps say that there are equally good prescriptions in human laws. But Moses and God existed before all your Lycurguses and Solons. There is not one after-age[2908] which does not take from primitive sources. At any rate, my Creator did not learn from your God to issue such commandments as: Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not covet what is thy neighbour’s; honour thy father and thy mother; and, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. To these prime counsels of innocence, chastity, and justice, and piety, are also added prescriptions of humanity, as when every seventh year slaves are released for liberty;[2909] when at the same period the land is spared from tillage; a place is also granted to the needy; and from the treading ox’s mouth the muzzle is removed, for the enjoyment of the fruit of his labour before him, in order that kindness first shown in the case of animals might be raised from such rudiments[2910] to the refreshment[2911] of men.
But what parts of the law can I defend as good with a greater confidence than those which heresy has shown such a longing for?—as the statute of retaliation, requiring eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and stripe for stripe.[2912] Now there is not here any smack of a permission to mutual injury; but rather, on the whole, a provision for restraining violence. To a people which was very obdurate, and wanting in faith towards God, it might seem tedious, and even incredible, to expect from God that vengeance which was subsequently to be declared by the prophet: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”[2913] Therefore, in the meanwhile, the commission of wrong was to be checked[2914] by the fear of a retribution immediately to happen; and so the permission of this retribution was to be the prohibition of provocation, that a stop might thus be put to all hot-blooded[2915] injury, whilst by the permission of the second the first is prevented by fear, and by this deterring of the first the second fails to be committed. By the same law another result is also obtained,[2916] even the more ready kindling of the fear of retaliation by reason of the very savour of passion which is in it. There is no more bitter thing, than to endure the very suffering which you have inflicted upon others. When, again, the law took somewhat away from men’s food, by pronouncing unclean certain animals which were once blessed, you should understand this to be a measure for encouraging continence, and recognise in it a bridle imposed on that appetite which, while eating angels’ food, craved after the cucumbers and melons of the Egyptians. Recognise also therein a precaution against those companions of the appetite, even lust and luxury, which are usually chilled by the chastening of the appetite.[2917] For “the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.”[2918] Furthermore, that an eager wish for money might be restrained, so far as it is caused by the need of food, the desire for costly meat and drink was taken out of their power. Lastly, in order that man might be more readily educated by God for fasting, he was accustomed to such articles of food as were neither plentiful nor sumptuous, and not likely to pamper the appetite of the luxurious. Of course the Creator deserved all the greater blame, because it was from His own people that He took away food, rather than from the more ungrateful Marcionites. As for the burdensome sacrifices also, and the troublesome scrupulousness of their ceremonies[2919] and oblations, no one should blame them, as if God specially required them for Himself: for He plainly asks, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” and, “Who hath required them at your hand?”[2920] But he should see herein a careful provision[2921] on God’s part, which showed His wish to bind to His own religion a people who were prone to idolatry and transgression by that kind of services wherein consisted the superstition of that period; that He might call them away therefrom, while requesting it to be performed to Himself, as if He desired that no sin should be committed in making idols.
But even in the common transactions of life, and of human intercourse at home and in public, even to the care of the smallest vessels, He in every possible manner made distinct arrangement; in order that, when they everywhere encountered these legal instructions, they might not be at any moment out of the sight of God. For what could better tend to make a man happy, than having “his delight in the law of the Lord?” “In that law would he meditate day and night.”[2922] It was not in severity that its Author promulgated this law, but in the interest of the highest benevolence, which rather aimed at subduing[2923] the nation’s hardness of heart, and by laborious services hewing out a fealty which was (as yet) untried in obedience: for I purposely abstain from touching on the mysterious senses of the law, considered in its spiritual and prophetic relation, and as abounding in types of almost every variety and sort. It is enough at present, that it simply bound a man to God, so that no one ought to find fault with it, except him who does not choose to serve God. To help forward this beneficent, not onerous, purpose of the law, the prophets were also ordained by the self-same goodness of God, teaching precepts worthy of God, how that men should “cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, judge the fatherless,[2924] and plead for the widow:”[2925] be fond of the divine expostulations:[2926] avoid contact with the wicked:[2927] “let the oppressed go free:”[2928] dismiss the unjust sentence,[2929] “deal their bread to the hungry; bring the outcast into their house; cover the naked, when they see him; nor hide themselves from their own flesh and kin:”[2930] “keep their tongue from evil, and their lips from speaking guile: depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it:”[2931] be angry, and sin not; that is, not persevere in anger, or be enraged:[2932] “walk not in the counsel of the ungodly; nor stand in the way of sinners; nor sit in the seat of the scornful.”[2933] Where then? “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity;”[2934] meditating (as they do) day and night in the law of the Lord, because “it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man; better to hope in the Lord than in man.”[2935] For what recompense shall man receive from God? “He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”[2936] “He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not taken God’s name in vain, nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbour, he shall receive blessing from the Lord, and mercy from the God of his salvation.”[2937] “For the eyes of the Lord are upon them that fear Him, upon them that hope in His mercy, to deliver their souls from death,” even eternal death, “and to nourish them in their hunger,” that is, after eternal life.[2938] “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth them out of them all.”[2939] “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.”[2940] “The Lord keepeth all their bones; not one of them shall be broken.”[2941] The Lord will redeem the souls of His servants.[2942] We have adduced these few quotations from a mass of the Creator’s Scriptures; and no more, I suppose, are wanted to prove Him to be a most good God, for they sufficiently indicate both the precepts of His goodness and the first-fruits[2943] thereof.
But these “saucy cuttles”[2944] (of heretics) under the figure of whom the law about things to be eaten[2945] prohibited this very kind of piscatory aliment, as soon as they find themselves confuted, eject the black venom of their blasphemy, and so spread about in all directions the object which (as is now plain) they severally have in view, when they put forth such assertions and protestations as shall obscure and tarnish the rekindled light[2946] of the Creator’s bounty. We will, however, follow their wicked design, even through these black clouds, and drag to light their tricks of dark calumny, laying to the Creator’s charge with especial emphasis the fraud and theft of gold and silver which the Hebrews were commanded by Him to practise against the Egyptians. Come, unhappy heretic, I cite even you as a witness; first look at the case of the two nations, and then you will form a judgment of the Author of the command. The Egyptians put in a claim on the Hebrews for these gold and silver vessels.[2947] The Hebrews assert a counter claim, alleging that by the bond[2948] of their respective fathers, attested by the written engagement of both parties, there were due to them the arrears of that laborious slavery of theirs, for the bricks they had so painfully made, and the cities and palaces[2949] which they had built. What shall be your verdict, you discoverer[2950] of the most good God? That the Hebrews must admit the fraud, or the Egyptians the compensation? For they maintain that thus has the question been settled by the advocates on both sides,[2951] of the Egyptians demanding their vessels, and the Hebrews claiming the requital of their labours. But for all they say,[2952] the Egyptians justly renounced their restitution-claim then and there; while the Hebrews to this day, in spite of the Marcionites, re-assert their demand for even greater damages,[2953] insisting that, however large was their loan of the gold and silver, it would not be compensation enough, even if the labour of six hundred thousand men should be valued at only “a farthing”[2954] a day a piece. Which, however, were the more in number—those who claimed the vessel, or those who dwelt in the palaces and cities? Which, too, the greater—the grievance of the Egyptians against the Hebrews, or “the favour”[2955] which they displayed towards them? Were free men reduced to servile labour, in order that the Hebrews might simply proceed against the Egyptians by action at law for injuries; or in order that their officers might on their benches sit and exhibit their backs and shoulders shamefully mangled by the fierce application of the scourge? It was not by a few plates and cup—in all cases the property, no doubt, of still fewer rich men—that any one would pronounce that compensation should have been awarded to the Hebrews, but both by all the resources of these and by the contributions of all the people.[2956] If, therefore, the case of the Hebrews be a good one, the Creator’s case must likewise be a good one; that is to say, his command, when He both made the Egyptians unconsciously grateful, and also gave His own people their discharge in full[2957] at the time of their migration by the scanty comfort of a tacit requital of their long servitude. It was plainly less than their due which He commanded to be exacted. The Egyptians ought to have given back their men-children[2958] also to the Hebrews.
Search Comments
This page has been visited 0001 times.
| << | Contents | >> |
10 per page