Chapter 34

§ 1.

But we will say in reply to all Heretics, and first to those who are on Marcion’s side, and to such as resemble them in saying that the Prophets are of another God: Read more carefully the Gospel given us by the Apostles, and read the Prophets more carefully, and you will find therein foretold all the doings and all the doctrines and all the Passion of our Lord.

But if this thought occurs to you, to say, What then hath the Lord’s coming brought us?—know ye, that He brought all newness,¹ in that He brought Himself, Who had been foretold: this being the very thing announced, that a new state should come, to renew and quicken man. For the King’s advent is indeed announced by the Servants who are sent, to furnish and disencumber such as are beginning to receive their Lord. But after that the King hath come, and His subjects are filled with the joy before announced, and have tasted the liberty which comes from Him, and share His vision, and have heard His words, and enjoyed gifts from Him; it will be no longer asked, “What the new King² brought with Him, more than those who foretold His coming;”—at least among those who have understanding. For He brought Himself, and bestowed on men the good things which were foretold,³ which the Angels were desiring to look into.

§ 2.

But in the other case they would have been lying slaves, and without mission from the Lord, had Christ not come such as He was announced, and fulfilled their words.⁴ Wherefore He said, Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets: I came not to destroy but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till Heaven and Earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall not pass from the Law and the Prophets, until all be fulfilled. For Himself at His coming fulfilled all, and yet fulfils in the Church unto the end the New Testament foretold by the Law. As Paul also His Apostle saith in the Epistle to the Romans,⁵ But now the Righteousness of God without the Law is made manifest, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets:⁶ For the Just shall live by faith.⁷ But this point, that the Just shall live by faith, had been foretold by the Prophets.

§ 3.

But whence could the Prophets foretell the Coming of the King, and preach before the good news of the liberty which He was giving, and announce all Christ’s doings, both His discourse, and His works, and His Passion—and predict the New Testament; if they received prophetical inspiration from another God: being, as you say, ignorant of the unutterable Father, and of His Kingdom, and of His Ordinances, which the Son of God, when He came, fulfilled in the earth?

For you cannot surely say that all this happened by some chance, as though, while the Prophets had spoken of some other, the like had nevertheless befallen the Lord. For all the Prophets prophesied the same: but they happened not to any of the ancients. For had they happened to any of the ancients, of course those who came afterwards would not have foretold their happening in the last times. Even until now there is no one, either among Fathers, or Prophets, or ancient Kings, in whom any one of these things hath properly and specially come to pass. Thus all of them foretold indeed the sufferings of Christ, but themselves were far from suffering according to those predictions.

Neither were the tokens foretold of the Lord’s Passion fulfilled in any other. For neither did the sun set at noonday, upon the death of any one of the ancients, nor was the vail of the Temple rent, nor did the earth quake, nor were the rocks cleft, nor did the dead, arise, nor did either one of them arise on the third day, neither was he taken up into Heaven, nor when he was taken up was the Heaven opened, nor did Gentiles believe on the name of any other, nor did any one of them, dead and rising again, open the New Testament of Liberty. Of no other then, but of the Lord, in Whom met all the signs foretold, were the Prophets speaking.

§ 4.

But if any one, pleading for the Jews, should say of the raising of the Temple, which took place under Zorobabel after their migration into Babylon, and of the departure of the people which took place after seventy years, that this is the New Testament; let him know, that the Temple of stone indeed was at that time rebuilt, (for as yet that law was in force which had been made in tables of stone,) but no new Testament was given; rather the law which was given by Moses was their rule until the coming of the Lord: but from the coming of the Lord there went forth into the whole Earth the New Testament, reconciling men unto peace, and the Law which gives life.

For out of Sion shall go forth the Law,⁸ and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and shall rebuke much people: and they shall break their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, and they shall no more learn warfare. If then any other law and word going out of Jerusalem wrought so great peace among the nations which received it, and by them convicted much people of inconsideration: it seems to follow that the Prophets spake of some other. But if the Law of Liberty, i.e.,⁹ the Word of God by the Apostles who went out from Jerusalem, being proclaimed in the whole Earth, wrought a change to such an extent, that swords and war-spears were thereby forged into plough-shares, and converted into pruning-hooks,—into instruments of peace, given for reaping corn:—and now they know not how to fight,¹⁰ but when smitten offer also the other cheek:—not of some other did the Prophets so speak, but of Him who did all this. Now this is our Lord, and in Him is the saying true; for it is He who made the plough, and applied the pruning hook¹¹, i.e., the first sowing of man, his formation in Adam; and the gathered fruitful crop of him in the last times by the Word. And accordingly He, conjoining the beginning with the end, as being Lord even of both, as in the end He manifested His plough, wood joined with iron, and thereby hath purged Earth, which is His:—in that, being the strong Word united to the Flesh, and formed in meet shape¹², He cleared the over-grown earth:—so in the beginning He typified the hook by Abel, signifying how the righteous kind should be gathered from among men.¹³ For see, He saith, how the righteous perisheth, and no man looketh on; and just men are taken away, and no man receiveth it in heart. Now these things were exemplified indeed in Abel, but by the Prophets they were announced, and by the Lord fulfilled: and in us too the same thing takes place, the Body following its Head.

§ 5.

In reply then to such as say, that the Prophets are of one God, our Lord of another, the Father, considerations of this kind are pertinent, if haply they may some time cease from so great an absurdity. For this indeed is why we take pains to adduce the proofs which the Scriptures supply; that confuting them by the very words, we may to the best of our power restrain them from their great blasphemy, and senseless fabrication of many gods.