Chapter II.—Marcion, Aided by Cerdon, Teaches a Duality of Gods; How He Constructed This Heresy of an Evil and a Good God.

The heretic of Pontus introduces two Gods, like the twin Symplegades of his own shipwreck: One whom it was impossible to deny, i.e. our Creator; and one whom he will never be able to prove, i.e. his own god.  The unhappy man gained28    Passus.    [Contains no marks of Montanism of a decisive nature. Kaye, p. 54.] the first idea29    Instinctum.    Digne. of his conceit from the simple passage of our Lord’s saying, which has reference to human beings and not divine ones, wherein He disposes of those examples of a good tree and a corrupt one;30    St. Luke vi. 43 sq.    From the dignity of the supreme Godhead. how that “the good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, neither the corrupt tree good fruit.” Which means, that an honest mind and good faith cannot produce evil deeds, any more than an evil disposition can produce good deeds. Now (like many other persons now-a-days, especially those who have an heretical proclivity), while morbidly brooding31    Languens.    Snbruere. over the question of the origin of evil, his perception became blunted by the very irregularity of his researches; and when he found the Creator declaring, “I am He that createth evil,”32    Isa. xlv. 7.    Propria paratura. inasmuch as he had already concluded from other arguments, which are satisfactory to every perverted mind, that God is the author of evil, so he now applied to the Creator the figure of the corrupt tree bringing forth evil fruit, that is, moral evil,33    Mala.    With the tanto (answering to the previous quanto) should be understood magis, a frequent omission in our author. and then presumed that there ought to be another god, after the analogy of the good tree producing its good fruit.  Accordingly, finding in Christ a different disposition, as it were—one of a simple and pure benevolence34    [This purely good or goodish divinity is an idea of the Stoics. De Præscript. chap. 7.]    Cura in.—differing from the Creator, he readily argued that in his Christ had been revealed a new and strange35    Hospitam.    Inciderat. divinity; and then with a little leaven he leavened the whole lump of the faith, flavouring it with the acidity of his own heresy.

He had, moreover, in one36    Quendam. [See Irenæus, Vol. I. p. 352, this Series.] Cerdon an abettor of this blasphemy,—a circumstance which made them the more readily think that they saw most clearly their two gods, blind though they were; for, in truth, they had not seen the one God with soundness of faith.37    Integre. To men of diseased vision even one lamp looks like many. One of his gods, therefore, whom he was obliged to acknowledge, he destroyed by defaming his attributes in the matter of evil; the other, whom he laboured so hard to devise, he constructed, laying his foundation38    Præstruendo. in the principle of good. In what articles39    Or sections. he arranged these natures, we show by our own refutations of them.

CAPUT II.

Duos Ponticus deos affert , tamquam duas symplegadas 0248B naufragii sui : quem negare non potuit, id est Creatorem, id est nostrum, et quem probare non poterit, id est suum: passus infelix hujus praesumptionis instinctum , de simplici capitulo Dominicae pronuntiationis , in homines non in deos disponentis exempla illa bonae et malae arboris, quod neque bona malos, neque mala bonos proferat fructus (Matth. VIII, 18): id est, neque mens vel fides bona, malas edat operas, neque mala bonas. Languens enim (quod et nunc multi, et maxime haeretici) circa mali quaestionem, «unde malum ?» et obtusis sensibus ipsa enormitate curiositatis, inveniens Creatorem pronuntiantem (Is., LXV, 7) : Ego sum qui condo mala ; quanto ipsum praesumpserat mali auctorem, et ex aliis argumentis, quae ita persuadent perverso 0248C cuique, tanto in Creatorem interpretatus malam arborem malos fructus condentem, scilicet mala; alium 0249A deum praesumpsit esse debere in partem bonae arboris bonos fructus. Et ita in Christo quasi aliam inveniens dispositionem, solius et purae benignitatis, ut diversae a Creatore, facile novam et hospitam argumentatus est divinitatem in Christo suo revelatam, modicoque exinde fermento totam fidei massam haeretico acore decepit . Habuit et Cerdonem quemdam informatorem scandali hujus; quo facilius duos deos caeci perspexisse se existimaverunt. Unum enim non integre viderant. Lippientibus etiam singularis lucerna numerosa est. Alterum igitur deum, quem confiteri cogebatur, de malo infamando destruxit: alterum, quem commentari connitebatur, de bono proferendo construxit. Has naturas quibus disposuerit articulis, per ipsas responsiones nostras 0249B ostendimus.