Tertullian — Against Marcion 5.15
It will not irk to attend to the shorter letters too. There is savor even in a few. The Jews had killed their prophets. I can say: what is that to the apostle of another god and indeed the best, who is said not even to damn his own people’s faults and who himself somehow kills those same prophets by destroying them? What evil did Israel commit with him if it killed those he also rejected, if he first set a hostile sentence on them? But it offended with their own God: he whose injured party it is will reproach the iniquity — certainly anyone other than the injured one’s adversary. But neither would he have loaded them by charging also the Lord’s killing who killed both the Lord and their prophets — though “their” is the heretic’s addition. For what is so bitter if they destroyed Christ, another god’s preacher, who had butchered their own God’s prophets? But the state of the heightening is that they had killed both the Lord and his servants. Finally if they killed another god’s Christ and another’s prophets, he equalized the impiety, he did not heighten it. But it ought not to have been equalized: therefore it could not be heightened unless committed against the same God under either title. Therefore Christ and the prophets are of the same God.
But what holiness of ours he calls God’s will is to be known from the contraries he forbids — for abstain, he says, from fornication, not from marriage; that each know how to handle his own vessel in honor. How? While not in lust, as the nations. But lust even among the nations is not ascribed to marriage, but to extraordinary and unnatural and monstrous luxuries; and whatever is contrary to shame and uncleanness, which does not shut out marriage but lust, which handles our vessel in marriage’s honor. But I would treat this place with the preference of another, that is fuller, holiness safe, setting continence and virginity before marriages, but not forbidden ones. For I beat back destroyers of the God of marriages, not followers of chastity.
He says those who remain unto Christ’s advent, with those who have died in Christ rising first, will be taken in clouds into the air to meet the Lord. I recognize the heavenly substances themselves — that Jerusalem which is above — already then looking ahead to these and announcing through Isaiah: Who are these that fly here like clouds, like doves with chicks to me? If Christ will prepare this ascent for us, he will be that Christ of whom Hosea: who builds his ascent into the heavens, of course for himself and his. From then from whom shall I hope now, if not from him from whom I heard these things? Which Spirit does he forbid to be quenched, and which prophecies does he forbid to be counted nothing? Of course not the Creator’s Spirit nor the Creator’s prophecies according to Marcion. For what he destroys he himself has already quenched and made nothing, and he cannot forbid what he himself did. Therefore it falls on Marcion to show today in his church from then his God’s Spirit, which is not to be quenched, and prophecies that are not to be counted nothing. And if he has shown what he thinks, let him know we will challenge whatever it is to the form of spiritual and prophetic grace and power, so that it both foretell futures and reveal the heart’s hidden things and expound sacraments. When he has brought out and proved nothing such, we will bring out both the Creator’s Spirit and prophecies preaching according to him. And so it will stand what the apostle spoke of — of those of course that were going to be in the church of that God who, while he is, his Spirit also works and the promise is celebrated. Come now, you who deny the flesh’s salvation and, whenever a body is named first in such a place, interpret it as I know not what other than flesh’s substance: how did the apostle distinguish all substances in us by sure names and set all in one vow of salvation, wishing that our spirit and body and soul be kept without complaint at the advent of our Lord and Savior Christ? For he set both soul and body, as two things as different. For though the soul is also some body of its own quality, as also the spirit, yet when both body and soul are named distinctly, and the soul has its own proper word, not needing the common word body, that is left to flesh, which, not named by its own, must use the common. For I do not see another substance in man after spirit and soul to which the word body is fitted besides flesh — understanding this so often under the name body whenever it is not named; much more here, when what is called body is called by its own name.
Latin
Breuioribus quoque epistulis non pigebit intendere. est sapor et in paucis. occiderant Iudaei prophetas suos. possum dicere: quid ad apostolum dei alterius et quidem optimi, qui nec suorum delicta damnare dicatur quique et ipse prophetas eosdem destruendo quodammodo perimat? quid mali admisit apud illum Israhel, si occidit quos et ille reprobauit, si prior inimicam in eos sententiam statuit? deliquit autem apud deum ipsorum: is exprobrabit iniquitatem, ad quem pertinet laesus; certe quiuis alius quam aduersarius laesi. sed nec onerasset illos imputando etiam domini necem qui et dominum interfecerunt dicendo et prophetas suos, licet suos adiectio sit haeretici. quid enim tam acerbum, si alterius dei praedicatorem Christum interemerunt qui sui dei prophetas contrucidauerunt? status autem (est) exaggerationis, quod et dominum et famulos eius peremissent. denique si alterius dei Christum alterius prophetas peremerunt, aequauit impietatem, non exaggerauit. aequanda autem non fuit: ergo exaggerari non potuit, nisi in eundem deum commissa ex utroque titulo. ergo eiusdem dei Christus et prophetae.
Quam autem sanctitatem nostram (uoluntatem dei dicat, ex contrariis, quae prohibet, agnoscere est — abstinere enim, inquit, a stupro, non a matrimonio; scire unumquemque uas suum in honore tractare. quomodo? dum non in libidine, qua gentes. libido autem nec apud gentes matrimonio adscribitur, sed extraordinarils et non naturalibus et portentosis luxuriae —: est turpitudini quaque et inmunditiae contraria, quae non matrimonium excludat, sed libidinem, quae uas nostrum in honore matrimonii tractet. hunc autem locum salua alterius, id est plenioris sanctitatis praelatione tractauerim, continentiam et uirginitatem nuptiis anteponens, sed non prohibitis. destructores enim dei nuptiarum, non sectatores castitatis retundo.
Ait eos, qui remaneant in aduentum Christi cum eis, qui mortui in Christo primi resurgent, quod in nubibus auferentur in aerem obuiam domino. agnosco his iam tunc prospectis mirari substantias caelestes ipsam Hierusalem, quae sursum est, et per Esaiam pronuntiare: quinam huc uelut nubes uolant, tamquam columbae cum pullis ad me? hunc ascensum si Christus nobis praeparabit, ille erit Christus, de quo Osee: qui ascensum suum aedificat in caelos, utique sibi et suis. exinde a quo sperabo nunc, nisi a quo haec audiui ? Quem spiritum prohibet extingui et quas prophetias uetat nihil haberi? utique non creatoris spiritum nec creatoris prophetias secundum Marcionem. quae enim destruit, ipse iam extinxit et nihil fecit, nec potest prohibere quae ipse fecit. ergo incumbit Marcioni exhibere hodie apud ecclesiam suam exinde spiritum dei sui, qui non sit extinguendus, et prophetias, quae non sint nihil habendae. et si exhibuit quod putat, sciat nos quodcumque illud ad formam spiritalis et propheticae gratiae atque uirtutis prouocaturos, ut et futura praenuntiet et occulta cordis reuelet et sacramenta edisserat. cum nihil tale protulerit ac probarit, nos proferemus et spiritum et prophetias creatoris secundum ipsum praedicantes. atque ita constabit apostolus de quibus dixerit, de eis scilicet, quae futura erant in ecclesia eius dei, qui dum est, spiritus quoque eius operatur et promissio celebratur. Age nunc, qui salutem carnis abnuitis et, si quando corpus in huiusmodi praenominatur, aliud nescio quid interpretamini illud quam substantiam carnis, quomodo apostolus omnes in nobis substantias certis nominibus distinxit et omnes in uno uoto constituit salutis, optans, ut spiritus noster et corpus et anima sine querela in aduentu domini et salutificatoris nostri Christi conseruentur? nam et animam posuit et corpus, tam duas res quam diuersas. licet enim et anima et] corpus sit aliquod suae qualitatis, sicut et spiritus, cum tamen et corpus et anima distincte nominantur, habet <autem) anima suum uocabulum proprium, non egens communi uocabulo corporis, id relinquitur carni, quae non nominata proprio, communi utatur necesse est. etenim aliam substantiam in homine non uideo post spiritum et animam, cui uocabulum corporis accommodetur praeter carnem, hanc totiens in corporis nomine intellegens, quotiens non nominatur; multo magis hic, cum quae dicitur corpus suo nomine appellatur.