Tertullian — Against Marcion 15

I shall not be sorry to bestow attention on the shorter epistles also. Even in brief works there is much pungency. The Jews had slain their prophets . 1 Thessalonians 2:15 I may ask, What has this to do with the apostle of the rival god, one so amiable withal, who could hardly be said to condemn even the failings of his own people; and who, moreover, has himself some hand in making away with the same prophets whom he is destroying? What injury did Israel commit against him in slaying those whom he too has reprobated, since he was the first to pass a hostile sentence on them? But Israel sinned against their own God. He upbraided their iniquity to whom the injured God pertains; and certainly he is anything but the adversary of the injured Deity .

Else he would not have burdened them with the charge of killing even the Lord, in the words, Who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets , although (the pronoun) their own be an addition of the heretics . Now, what was there so very acrimonious in their killing Christ the proclaimer of the new god, after they had put to death also the prophets of their own god? The fact, however, of their having slain the Lord and His servants, is put as a case of climax.

Now, if it were the Christ of one god and the prophets of another god whom they slew, he would certainly have placed the impious crimes on the same level, instead of mentioning them in the way of a climax; but they did not admit of being put on the same level: the climax, therefore, was only possible by the sin having been in fact committed against one and the same Lord in the two respective circumstances. To one and the same Lord, then, belonged Christ and the prophets . What that sanctification of ours is, which he declares to be the will of God , you may discover from the opposite conduct which he forbids. That we should abstain from fornication, not from marriage; that every one should know how to possess his vessel in honour . 1 Thessalonians 4:3-4 In what way? Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles .

1 Thessalonians 4:5 Concupiscence, however, is not ascribed to marriage even among the Gentiles , but to extravagant, unnatural, and enormous sins . The law of nature is opposed to luxury as well as to grossness and uncleanness; it does not forbid connubial intercourse, but concupiscence; and it takes care of our vessel by the honourable estate of matrimony. This passage (of the apostle) I would treat in such a way as to maintain the superiority of the other and higher sanctity , preferring continence and virginity to marriage, but by no means prohibiting the latter. For my hostility is directed against those who are for destroying the God of marriage, not those who follow after chastity .