Tertullian, Against Marcion 15
Whether before or after these points, once you claim that Marcion's god has his own condition, his own world, and his own heaven — we will examine that third heaven later, if we ever get around to discussing your apostle — but in the meantime, whatever his substance may be, it ought to have appeared alongside his own god. Yet here we are: the Lord was revealed in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while the substance remains entirely undiscovered in the fifteenth year of Emperor Severus. This substance, which supposedly outdoes the creator's trivialities, should have stayed hidden — not while its own Lord and author remained hidden. So if the substance itself could not be revealed in this world, how did the Lord obey it in this world? If this world seized the Lord, why could it not seize the substance — unless the Lord is perhaps greater?
Now the question turns to place, and it touches both that upper world and its god. Consider: if that god also has his world beneath him, above the creator, he made it in a place — specifically, the vacant space between his own feet and the creator's head. Therefore the god himself was in a place, and he made the world in a place, and that place will be greater than both god and world. Nothing that contains something else fails to be greater than what it contains. And we must check whether any vacant spaces still remain there, where a third god might station himself with his own world. So start counting gods now. Place will be a god — not only because it surpasses god, but because it is innate, ungenerated, and therefore eternal and equal to god, the place in which god has always existed.
Next, if that god also fashioned the world from some underlying material — innate, ungenerated, and contemporary with god, as Marcion supposes of the creator — you drag this too into the majesty of place, which encloses both god and material: two gods. For material is also a god according to the form of divinity — namely innate, ungenerated, and eternal. Or if he made the world from nothing, this same conclusion will be forced on the creator, to whom material is subjected in the substance of the world. But he, too, ought to have made it from material, since the same reasoning applies to the god opposed to the creator, making him equally god. And so Marcion gives me three gods for now: the maker, the place, and the material.
Accordingly, he also puts the creator in a place, judging by the same condition, and subjects material to him — innate, ungenerated, and eternal by that same name, just like the Lord. Further, by assigning evil to material — innate to the innate, ungenerated to the ungenerated, eternal to the eternal — he has now produced a fourth god. You therefore have, in the upper realm, three substances of divinity; in the lower, four. When their own Christs are added to these — one who appeared under Tiberius, another promised by the creator — Marcion suffers obvious fraud at the hands of those who suppose he introduces two gods, when he actually assigns nine, albeit unknowingly.
Latin
Post haec, uel ante haec, cum dixeris esse et illi conditionem suam et suum mundum et suum caelum, — de caelo quidem illo tertio uidebimus, si et ad apostolum uestrum discutiendum peruenerimus — interim, quaecumque substantia eius est, cum suo utique deo apparuisse debuerat. at nunc quale est, ut dominus anno quinto* decimo Tiberii Caesaris reuelatus sit, substantia uero anno quinto decimo iam Seueri imperatoris nulla omnino comperta sit? quae friuolis creatoris praecellens utique latere desisset, non latente iam domino suo et auctore. et ideo, si ipsa non potuit manifestari in hoc mundo, quomodo dominus paruit eius in hoc mundo? si dominum cepit hic mundus, cur substantiam capere non potuit, nisi domino fortasse maiorem? iam nunc de loco quaestio est, pertinens et ad mundum illum superiorem et ad ipsum deum eius. ecce enim, si et ille habet mundum suum infra se, super creatorem, in loco utique fecit eum, cuius spatium uacabat inter pedes suos et caput creatoris. ergo et deus ipse in loco erat et mundum in loco faciebat, et erit iam locus ille maior et deo et mundo. nihil enim non maius est id quod capit eo quod capitur. et uidendum, ne qua adhuc illic uacent subsiciua. in quibus et tertius aliqui stipare deus se cum mundo suo possit. ergo iam incipe deos computare. erit enim et locus deus, non tantum qua deo maior, sed et qua innatus et infectus ac per hoc aeternus et deo par, in quo semper deus fuerit. dehinc si et ille mundum ex aliqua materia subiacente molitus est innata et infecta et contemporali deo, quemadmodum de creatore Marcion sentit, redigis et hoc ad maiestatem loci, qui et deum et materiam, duos deos, clusit. et materia enim deus secundum formam diuinitatis, innata scilicet et infecta et aeterna, aut si de nihilo molitus est mundum, hoc et de creatore sentire cogetur, cui materiam subicit in substantiam mundi. sed ex, materia et ille fecisse debebit. eadem ratione occurrente illi quoque, [deo] quae opponitur creatori, ut aeque deo. atque ita tres interim mihi deos numera Marcionis, factorem et locum et materiam. proinde et creatorem in loco facit, utique eadem condicione censendo, et materiam ei subicit, utique innatam et infectam et hoc nomine aeternam, ut dominum. amplius; I et malum materiae deputans, innatum innatae, infectum infectae et aeternum aeternae, quartum iam hinc deum fecit. habes igitur in superioribus tres substantias diuinitatis, in inferioribus quat- i tuor. his cum accedunt et sui Christi, alter qui apparuit sub Tiberio alter qui a creatore promittitur. manifestam iam fraudem Marcion patitur ab eis, qui duos illum deos inferre : praesumunt, cum nouem adsignet, licet nesciens,