Chapter X.—The Truly Incarnate State More Worthy of God Than Marcion’s Fantastic Flesh.

Therefore, since you are not permitted to resort to any instances of the Creator, as alien from the subject, and possessing special causes of their own, I should like you to state yourself the design of your god, in exhibiting his Christ not in the reality of flesh. If he despised it as earthly, and (as you express it) full of dung,908    Stercoribus infersam. why did he not on that account include the likeness of it also in his contempt? For no honour is to be attributed to the image of anything which is itself unworthy of honour. As the natural state is, so will the likeness be. But how could he hold converse with men except in the image of human substance?909    A Marcionite argument. Why, then, not rather in the reality thereof, that his intercourse might be real, since he was under the necessity of holding it? And to how much better account would this necessity have been turned by ministering to faith rather than to a fraud!910    Stropham, a player’s trick; so in Spectac. 29. The god whom you make is miserable enough, for this very reason that he was unable to display his Christ except in the effigy of an unworthy, and indeed an alien, thing. In some instances, it will be convenient to use even unworthy things, if they be only our own, as it will also be quite improper to use things, be they ever so worthy, if they be not our own.911    Alienis. Why, then, did he not come in some other worthier substance, and especially his own, that he might not seem as if he could not have done without an unworthy and an alien one? Now, since my Creator held intercourse with man by means of even a bush and fire, and again afterwards by means of a cloud and column,912    Globum. and in representations of Himself used bodies composed of the elements, these examples of divine power afford sufficient proof that God did not require the instrumentality of false or even of real flesh.  But yet, if we look steadily into the subject, there is really no substance which is worthy of becoming a vestment for God. Whatsoever He is pleased to clothe Himself withal, He makes worthy of Himself—only without untruth.913    Mendacio. Therefore how comes it to pass that he should have thought the verity of the flesh, rather than its unreality, a disgrace? Well, but he honoured it by his fiction of it. How great, then, is that flesh, the very phantasy of which was a necessity to the superior God!

CAPUT X.

Igitur non admissus ad consortium exemplorum Creatoris, ut alienorum et suas habentium caussas, velim edas et ipse consilium Dei tui , quo Christum suum non in veritate carnis exhibuit. Si aspernatus est illam, ut terrenam, et, ut dicitis, stercoribus infersam , cur non et simulacrum ejus proinde despexit? Nullius enim dedignandae rei imago dignanda est: sequitur statum similitudo. Sed quomodo 0334C inter homines conversaretur, nisi per imaginem substantiae humanae? Cur ergo non potius per veritatem, ut vere conversaretur, si necesse habebat conversari? quanto dignius necessitas fidem, quam stropham administrasset? Satis miserum Deum instituis, hoc ipso, quod Christum suum non potuit exhibere, nisi in indignae rei effigie, et quidem alienae. Aliquantis enim indignis conveniet uti, si nostris ; sicut alienis non congruet uti, licet dignis. Cur enim non in aliqua alia digniore substantia venit, et in primis sua, ne et indigna et aliena videretur eguisse? Si Creator meus per rubum quoque et ignem, idem postea per nubem et globum cum homine congressus 0335A est, et elementorum corporibus in repraesentationibus sui usus est, satis haec exempla divinae potestatis ostendunt, Deum non eguisse aut falsae, aut etiam verae carnis paratura. Caeterum, si ad certum spectamus, nulla substantia digna est quam Deus inducat. Quodcumque induerit ipse, dignum facit, absque mendacio tamen. Et ideo, quale est, ut dedecus existimarit veritatem potius, quam mendacium carnis? Atquin honoravit illam fingendo. Quanta jam caro est, cujus phantasma necessarium fuit Deo superiori?