Chapter 27

§ 1.

One Cerdon too, taking his beginning from Simon and his set, sojourned in Rome under Hyginus, who occupied the ninth place in the Episcopal succession from the Apostles, and taught that the God proclaimed by the Law and the Prophets is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one being revealed, the other unknown: the one again being Just, the other Good.

§ 2.

And Marcion of Pontus came in his place, and extended his school, shamelessly blaspheming Him Who is declared God by the Law and the Prophets: affirming Him to be an evil-doer, and fond of wars, and inconstant also in His judgment, and contrary to Himself: and as for Jesus, that He came from that Father who is above the God who made the world, into Judæa in the time of Pontius Pilate the Governor, who was Tiberius Cæsar’s Procurator, and was manifest in human form to the inhabitants of Judæa, to do away the Prophets and the Law and all the works of that God who made the world, whom he also calls Ruler of world¹. And moreover, mutilating the Gospel according to St. Luke, and taking away all that is written of our Lord’s Birth, and much also from the doctrine of our Lord’s discourses, wherein it is most plainly written how our Lord confessed the Maker of this world to be His Father: he persuaded his disciples that he was himself more trustworthy than the Apostles who delivered the Gospel: while he was putting into their hands not the Gospel but a small portion of it. And in like wise the Epistles of the Apostle Paul too were mutilated by him, by taking out whatever is plainly spoken by the Apostle of the God Who made the world, how that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and whatsoever out of the prophetic writings the Apostle hath quoted in his teaching, as predictive of the coming of the Lord.

§ 3.

And salvation he says will be of our souls only, those souls which have learned his doctrine; but the body, because forsooth it is taken from the earth, cannot possibly partake of salvation. And over and above his blasphemy against God, he added this also, truly taking to him the mouth of the Devil, and saying every thing contrary to the truth: That Cain, and the like of him, and the Sodomites, and Egyptians, and the like of them, and in a word all the nations which had walked in a medley of all kinds of mischief, were saved by the Lord, upon His going down into Hell, and their running to meet Him; and that He received them into His Kingdom; while Abel and Enoch and Noe and the other righteous men, and those who belonged to the Patriarch Abraham, with all the Prophets, and such as pleased God, did not partake of salvation: so the serpent which was in Marcion proclaimed. For, saith he, because they knew that their God was always tempting them, they suspected Him of tempting them then, and accordingly did not hasten to Jesus, nor believe His preaching: and therefore, he said, their souls remained in Hell.

§ 4.

But him indeed,—because he alone dared openly both to mutilate the Scriptures, and to revile God more shamelessly than all others,—we will refute in a separate place, convicting him out of his own writings: and by those discourses of our Lord and the Apostle, which are retained by him, we will by God’s help effect his overthrow. But we were obliged to mention him now, that thou mightest know of all who in any way adulterate the truth, and damage the preaching of the Church, how that they are disciples and successors of Simon the sorcerer of Samaria. Although in order to seduce others they profess not their master’s name, yet they teach his opinion. Holding forth the Name of Christ Jesus as an allurement, while in various ways they bring in Simon’s impiety, they destroy many, by the good Name foully corrupting their views, and by the sweetness and glory of that Name holding out to them the bitter and malignant venom of the Serpent, the beginner of apostasy.