One God, Old and New Testaments
Tertullian, Against Marcion 29
What can I say about the vanity of a discipline that claims to sanctify what is already holy? In his system, flesh gets no stain — unless you are a virgin, a widow, celibate, or have bought your baptism with a divorce, as if eunuchs born of marriage do not even exist. This institution, beyond doubt, is built on the condemnation of marriage. Let us test whether it is just — not as those who would wreck the joy of holiness, like certain Nicolaitans, apologists for lust and luxury, but as those who know, follow, and prefer holiness without damning marriage, not treating the good as evil but the good as better. We do not throw marriage away; we set it aside. We do not command; we commend holiness, preserving both the good and the better as each person's strength allows, and only then stepping up to defend marriage when the enemy attacks it as filth in order to destroy the Creator, who blessed marriage for the integrity of the thing, for the increase of the human race (Genesis 1:28), just as he ordained the whole created order for sound and good uses.
Foods are not condemned because gluttons work harder to stuff their throats, nor is clothing accused because the ambitious swell with pride over costly garments. So marriage is not to be spat upon because intemperance pours it out into luxury. There is a vast gulf between cause and fault, between state and excess. Therefore it is not the institution but the transgression that deserves reproof, according to the judgment of the Institutor himself, whose words are both "increase and multiply" (Genesis 1:28) and "you shall not commit adultery, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife," punishing with death the incestuous, sacrilegious, monstrous madness of lust in men and beasts.
Even if a rule for marrying is now laid down — which spiritual reason, with the Paraclete as author, defends, prescribing one marriage in faith — it will be the same One who once loosened the reins who now tightens them; the One who scattered will gather; the One who planted will cut down the forest. The One who sowed will say: "It remains that those who have wives should be as though they had none," whose end is the same as its beginning: "increase and multiply." But the forest is not felled to be accused, nor the crop harvested to be condemned, but to obey its season. So marriage does not submit to the axe and sickle of holiness as something evil, but as something ripe, to be fulfilled and reserved for holiness itself, to which it yields pride of place.
From here I turn to the god of Marcion. When he rejects marriage as evil and the business of shame, he acts against the very holiness he pretends to cultivate. He eradicates its raw material: if there are no marriages, there is no holiness. The testimony of abstinence is empty when liberty is removed, because certain virtues are proven only in their opposites. Just as virtue is perfected in weakness, so abstinence from marriage is recognized only where the ability to marry exists. Who will be called abstinent when the thing to abstain from is gone? What temperance of appetite in hunger? What rejection of ambition in poverty? What restraint of lust in castration? And does it even suit the "best god" to choke off the entire seed of the human race? How can he want to save a man he forbids to be born? From whom is he taken away by being born? How will he have anyone in whom to stamp his goodness, if he refuses to let them exist? How will he love those whose origin he does not love? Perhaps he fears a surplus of offspring — lest he labor to liberate more, lest he make many heretics, lest he breed nobler Marcionites from Marcionites. Is not Pharaoh's hardness, slaughtering newborns, more humane? Pharaoh takes souls; this god does not give them. Pharaoh takes from life; this god refuses admission to life. There is no difference between them in homicide. Man is killed under both: under one, already born; under the other, waiting to be born. You would be grateful, O heretic god, if you were in the Creator's disposition, who joined male and female — for even your own Marcion was born of marriage.
Enough on the god of Marcion, whom neither the definitions of unique divinity nor the conditions of his states confirm in the least. But the whole sequence of this work will follow the same course. So if anyone thinks we have done too little, let him hope the rest is reserved for its proper time — just as the examination of the scriptures which Marcion uses is also reserved.
Latin
Quid dicam autem de disciplinae uanitate, qua sanctificat substantiam sanctam? non tingitur apud illum caro. nisi uirgo, nisi uidua, nisi caeleps, nisi diuortio baptisma mercata, quasi non etiam spadonibus ex nuptiis nata. sine dubio ex damnatione coniugii institutio ista constabit. uideamus, an iusta, non quasi destructuri felicitatem sanctitatis, ut aliqui Nicolaitae, adsertores libidinis atque luxuriae, sed qui sanctitatem sine nuptiarum damnatione nouerimus et sectemur et praeferamus, non ut malo bonum, sed ut bono melius. non enim proicimus, sed deponimus nuptias, nec praescribimus. sed suademus sanctitatem, seruantes et bonum et melius pro uiribus cuiusque sectando, tunc denique coniugium exerte defendentes, cum inimice accusatur spurcitiae nomine in destructionem creatoris, qui proinde coniugium pro rei honestate benedixit in crementum generis humani, quemadmodum et uniuersum conditionis in integros et bonos usus. non ideo autem et cibi damnabuntur, quia operosius exquisiti in gulam committunt, [tunc] nec uestitus ideo accusabuntur, quia pretiosius comparati in ambitionem tumescunt. sic nec matrimonii res ideo despuentur, quia intemperantius diffusae in luxuriam inardescunt. multum differt inter causam et culpam, inter statum et excessum. ita huiusmodi non institutio, sed exorbitatio reprobanda est, secundum censuram institutoris ipsius, cuius est tam: crescite et multiplicamini, quam et: non adulterabis et uxorem proximi tui non concupisces, morte punientis et incestam, sacrilegam atque monstrosam in masculos et in pecudes libidinum insaniam. sed et si nubendi iam modus ponitur, quem quidem apud nos spiritalis ratio paracleto auctore defendit, unum in fide matrimonium praescribens, eiusdem erit modum figere, qui modum aliquando diffuderat; is colliget, qui sparsit; is caedet siluam. qui plantauit: is metet segetem, qui seminauit; is dicet: superest, ut et qui uxores habent sic sint atque si non habeant, cuius et retro fuit: crescite et multiplicamini: eiusdem finis, cuius et initium. non tamen ut accusanda caeditur silua, nec ut damnanda secatur seges, sed ut tempori suo parens. sic et conubii res non ut mala securem et falcem admittit sanctitatis, sed ut matura defungi, ut ipsi sanctitati reseruata, cui cedendo praestaret esse. unde iam dicam deum Marcionis, cum matrimonium ut malum et impudicitiae negotium reprobat, aduersus ipsam facere sanctitatem, cui uidetur studere. materiam enim eius eradit, quia si nuptiae non erunt, sanctitas nulla est. uacat enim abstinentiae testimonium, cum licentia eripitur, quoniam ita quaedam in diuersis probantur. sicut et uirtus in infirmitate perficitur, sic et abstinentia nubendi in facultate dinoscitur. quis denique abstinens dicetur sublato eo, a quo abstinendum est? quae temperantia gulae in fame? quae ambitionis repudiatio in egestate? quae libidinis infrenatio in castratione? iam uero sementem generis humani compescere totum nescio an hoc quoque optimo deo congruat. quomodo enim saluum hominem uolet quem uetat nasci. de quo nascitur auferendo? quomodo habebit in quo bonitatem suam signet, quem esse non patitur? quomodo diliget cuius originem non amat? timet forsitan redundantiam subolis, ne laboret plures liberando, ne multos faciat haereticos, ne generosiores habeat Marcionitas ex Marcionitis. non erit humanior duritia Pharaonis nascentium enecatrix? nam ille animas adimit, hic non dat; ille aufert de uita, hic non admittit in uitam. nihil apud ambos de homicidio differt. sub utroque homo interficitur: sub altero iam editus, sub altero edendus. gratus esses. o dee haeretice. si esses, in dispositionem creatoris, quod marem et feminam miscuit: utique enim et Marcion tuus ex nuptiis natus est. Satis haec de deo Marcionis, quem et definitiones unicae diuinitatis et condiciones statuum eius omnino non esse confirmant. sed et totius opusculi series in hoc utique succedet. proinde. si cui minus quid uidemur egisse, speret reseruatum suo tempori. sicut et ipsarum scripturarum examinationem, quibus Marcion utitur.