Tertullian — Against Marcion 1.14
But when you also mock the tinier animals, which the greatest artisan of set purpose enlarged in talents or strengths, thus teaching greatness to be proved in mediocrity just as virtue in weakness according to the apostle—imitate, if you can, the bee’s buildings, the ant’s stables, the spider’s nets, the silkworm’s threads; endure, if you can, those very beasts of your couch and mat, the blister-beetle’s poisons, the fly’s stings, the gnat’s both trumpet and lance. What will the greater things be, when by such modest ones you are either helped or hurt, so that you may not despise the Creator even in modest things?
Finally carry yourself around to yourself; consider the human within and without: will even this work of our God please you—which your lord, that better god, loved, for whose sake he labored to descend into these poor elements from the third heaven, for whose cause he was even crucified in this little cell of the Creator? But he indeed until now has not rejected the Creator’s water, with which he washes his own, nor oil, with which he anoints his own, nor the partnership of honey and milk, with which he nurses his own as infants, nor bread, with which he represents his own very body—needing even in his own sacraments the Creator’s beggaries.
But you, disciple above the master and servant above the lord, are wiser more loftily than he, destroying what he desires. I want to inspect whether at least from faith, so that you yourself may not also seek what you destroy. You oppose heaven, and you capture heaven’s freedom in dwellings; you despise earth—clearly now the matrix of flesh hostile to you—and you wring all its marrows for food; the sea too is reprobate—but only up to its supplies, which you count holier food. If I offer you a rose, you will not disdain the Creator. Hypocrite—that by self-starvation you may prove yourself a Marcionite, that is a repudiator of the Creator—for this among you ought to have been affected for martyrdom, if the world displeased you—into whatever matter you dissolve, you use the Creator’s substance. How great the obstinacy of your hardness! You depreciate the things in which you both live and die.
Latin
At cum et animalia inrides minutiora, quae maximus artifex de industria ingeniis aut uiribus ampliauit, sic magnitu-i dinem in mediocritate probari docens quemadmodum uirtutem ; in infirmitate secundum apostolum, imitare, si potes, apis aedificia, formicae stabula, aranei retia, bombycis stamina, sustine, si potes, illas ipsas lectuli et tegetis tuae bestias,I cantharidis uenena, muscae spicula, culicis et tubam et lanceam. qualia erunt maiora, cum tam modicis aut iuuaris aut laederis, ut nec in modicis despicias creatorem? postremo te tibi circumfer, intus ac foris considera hominem: placebit tibi uel hoc opus dei nostri, quod tuus dominus, ille deus melior, adamauit, propter quem in haec paupertina elementa de tertio caelo descendere laborauit, cuius causa in hac cellula creatoris etiam crucifixus est? sed ille quidem usque nunc nec aquam reprobauit creatoris, qua suos abluit, nec oleum, quo suos ungit, nec mellis et lactis societatem, qua suos infantat, nec panem, quo ipsum corpus suum repraesentat etiam in sacramentis propriis egens mendicitatibus creatoris. at tu, super magistrum discipulus et seruus super dominum. I, sublimius illo sapis, destruens quae ille desiderat. uolo inspicere, si ex fide saltim, ut non et ipse quae destruis adpetas. I aduersaris caelum, et libertatem caeli in habitationibus captas:I despicis terram — plane inimicae iam tuae, carnis, matricem — et, omnes medullas eius uictui extorques; reprobus et mare, sed usque ad copias eius, quas sanctiorem cibum deputas. rosam tibi si obtulero, non fastidies creatorem. hypocrita, ut apocarteresi probes te Marcionitam, id est repudiatorem creatoris, — nam haec apud uos pro martyrio adfectari debuisset, si uobis mundus displiceret — in quamcumque materiam resolueris, substantiam creatoris uteris. quanta obstinatio duritiae tuae! depretias in quibus et uiuis et moreris.