Book V. General Reply to Sundry of Marcion’s Heresies.260
The first Book did the enemy’s words recall
In order, which the senseless renegade
Composed and put forth lawlessly; hence, too,
Touched briefly flesh’s hope, Christ’s victory,
5
And false ways’ speciousness. The next doth teach
The Law’s conjoinèd mysteries, and what
In the new covenant the one God hath
Delivered. The third shows the race, create
From freeborn mother, to be ministers
10
Sacred to seers and patriarchs;261 whom Thou,
O Christ, in number twice six out of all,262
Chosest; and, with their names, the lustral263 times
Of our own elders noted, (times preserved
On record,) showing in whose days appeared
15
The author264 of this wickedness, unknown,
Lawless, and roaming, cast forth265 with his brood.
The fourth, too, the piacular rites recalls
Of the old Law themselves, and shows them types
In which the Victim True appeared, by saints
20
Expected long since, with the holy Seed.
This fifth doth many twists and knots untie,
Rolls wholly into sight what ills soe’er
Were lurking; drawing arguments, but not
Without attesting prophet.
And although
25
With strong arms fortified we vanquish foes,
Yet hath the serpent mingled so at once
All things polluted, impious, unallowed,
Commaculate, - the blind’s path without light!
A voice contaminant! - that, all the while
30
We are contending the world’s Maker is
Himself sole God, who also spake by voice
Of seers, and proving that there is none else
Unknown; and, while pursuing Him with praise,
Who is by various endearment266 known,
35
Are blaming - among other fallacies -
The Unknown’s tardy times: our subject’s fault
Will scarce keep pure our tongue. Yet, for all that,
Guile’s many hidden venoms us enforce
(Although with double risk267) to ope our words.
40
Who, then, the God whom ye say is the true,
Unknown to peoples, alien, in a word,
To all the world?268 Him whom none knew before?
Came he from high? If ’tis his own269 he seeks,
Why seek so late? If not his own, why rob
45
Bandit-like? and why ply with words unknown
So oft throughout Law’s rein a People still
Lingering ’neath the Law? If, too, he comes
To pity and to succour all combined,
And to re-elevate men vanquisht quite
50
By death’s funereal weight, and to release
Spirit from flesh’s bond obscene, whereby
The inner man (iniquitously dwarfed)
Is held in check; why, then, so late appear
His ever-kindness, duteous vigilance?
55
How comes it that he ne’er at all before
Offered himself to any, but let slip
Poor souls in numbers?270 and then with his mouth
Seeks to regain another’s subjects: ne’er
Expected; not known; sent into the orb.
60
Seeking the “ewe” he had not lost before,
The Shepherd ought271 to have disrobed himself
Of flesh, as if his victor-self withal
Had ever been a spirit, and as such272
Willèd to rescue all expelled souls,
65
162 Without a body, everywhere, and leave
The spoilèd flesh to earth; wholly to till
The world273 on one day equally with corpses
To leave the orb void; and to raise the souls
To heaven. Then would human progeny
70
At once have ceased to be born; nor had
Thereafter any scion of your274 kith
Been born, or spread a new pest275 o’er the orb.
Or (since at that time276 none of all these things
Is shown to have been done) he should have set
75
A bound to future race; with solid heart
Nuptial embraces would he, in that case,
Have sated quite;277 made men grow torpid, reft
Of fruitful seed; made irksome intercourse
With female sex; and closed up inwardly
80
The flesh’s organs genital: our mind
Had had no will, no potent faculty
Our body: after this the “inner man”
Could withal, joined with blood,278 have been infused
And cleaved to flesh, and would have ever been
85
Perishing. Ever perishes the “ewe:”
And is there then no power of saving her?
Since man is ever being born beneath
Death’s doom, what is the Shepherd’s work, if thus
The “ewe” is stated279 to be found? Unsought,
90
In that case, but not rescued, she is proved.
But now choice is allowed of entering
Wedlock, as hath been ever; and that choice
Sure progeny hath yoked: nations are born
And folk scarce numerable, at whose birth
95
Their souls by living bodies are received;
Nor was it meet that Paul (though, for the time,
He did exhort some few, discerning well
The many pressures of a straitened time)
To counsel men in like case to abide
100
As he himself:280 for elsewhere he has bidden
The tender ages marry, nor defraud
Each other, but their compact’s dues discharge.
But say, whose suasion hath, with fraud astute,
Made you “abide,” and in divided love
105
Of offspring live secure, and commit crime
Adulterous, and lose your life? and, though
’Tis perishing, belie (by verbal name)
That fact. For which cause all the so sweet sounds
Of his voice pours he forth, that “you must do,
110
Undaunted, whatsoever pleases you
Outwardly chaste, stealthily stained with crime!
Of honourable wedlock, by this plea,281
He hath deprived you. But why more? ’Tis well
(Forsooth) to be disjoined! for the world, too,
115
Expedient ’tis! lest any of your seed
Be born! Then will death’s organs282 cease at length!
The while you hope salvation to retain,
Your “total man” quite loses part of man,
With mind profane: but neither is man said
120
To be sole spirit, nor the flesh is called
“The old man;” nor unfriendly are the flesh
And spirit, the true man combined in one,
The inner, and he whom you call “old foe;”283
Nor are they seen to have each his own set
125
Of senses. One is ruled; the other rules,
Groans, joys, grieves, loves; himself284 to his own flesh
Most dear, too; through which285 his humanity
Is visible, with which commixt he is
Held ever: to its wounds he care applies
130
And pours forth tears; and nutriments of food
Takes, through its limbs, often and eagerly:
This hopes he to have ever with himself
Immortal; o’er its fracture doth he groan;
And grieves to quit it limb by limb: fixt time
135
Death lords it o’er the unhappy flesh; that so
From light dust it may be renewed, and death
Unfriendly fail at length, when flesh, released,
Rises again. This will that victory be
Supreme and long expected, wrought by Him,
140
The aye-to-be-revered, who did become
163 True man; and by His Father’s virtue won:
Who man’s redeemed limbs unto the heavens
Hath raised,286 and richly opened access up
Thither in hope, first to His nation; then
145
To those among all tongues in whom His work
Is ever doing: Minister imbued
With His Sire’s parent-care, seen by the eye
Of the Illimitable, He performed,
By suffering, His missions.287
What say now
150
The impious voices? what th’ abandoned crew?
If He Himself, God the Creator’s self,
Gave not the Law,288 He who from Egypt’s vale289
Paved in the waves a path, and freely gave
The seats which He had said of old, why comes
155
He in that very People and that land
Aforesaid? and why rather sought He not
Some other290 peoples or some rival291 realms?
Why, further, did He teach that, through the seers,
(With Name foretold in full, yet not His own,)
160
He had been often sung of? Whence, again,
Could He have issued baptism’s kindly gifts,
Promised by some one else, as His own works?
These gifts men who God’s mandates had transgressed,
And hence were found polluted, longed for
165
And begged a pardoning rescue from fierce death.
Expected long, they292 came: but that to those
Who recognised them when erst heard, and now
Have recognised them, when in due time found,
Christ’s true hand is to give them, this, with voice
170
Paternal, the Creator-Sire Himself
Warns ever from eternity, and claims;
And thus the work of virtue which He framed,
And still frames, arms, and fosters, and doth now
Victorious look down on and reclothe
175
With His own light, should with Perennial praise
Abide.293
What294 hath the Living Power done
To make men recognise what God can give
And man can suffer, and thus live?295 But since
Neither predictions earlier nor facts
180
The latest can suade senseless frantic296 men
That God became a man, and (after He
Had suffered and been buried) rose; that they
May credit those so many witnesses
Harmonious,297 who of old did cry aloud
185
With heavenly word, let them both298 learn to trust
At least terrestrial reason.
When the Lord
Christ came to be, as flesh, born into the orb
In time of king Augustus’ reign at Rome,
First, by decree, the nations numbered are
190
By census everywhere: this measure, then,
This same king chanced to pass, because the Will
Supreme, in whose high reigning hand doth lie
The king’s heart, had impelled him:299 he was first
To do it, and the enrolment was reduced
195
To orderly arrangement. Joseph then
Likewise, with his but just delivered wife
Mary,300 with her celestial Son alike,
Themselves withal are numbered. Let, then, such
As trust to instruments of human skill,
200
Who may (approving of applying them
As attestators of the holy word)
Inquire into this census, if it be
But found so as we say, then afterwards
Repent they and seek pardon while time still
205
Is had.301
164 The Jews, who own302 to having wrought
A grave crime, while in our disparagement
They glow, and do resist us, neither call
Christ’s family unknown, nor can303 affirm
They hanged a man, who spake truth, on a tree:304
210
Ignorant that the Lord’s flesh which they bound305
Was not seed-gendered. But, while partially
They keep a reticence, so partially
They triumph; for they strive to represent
God to the peoples commonly as man.
215
Behold the error which o’ercomes you both!306
This error will our cause assist, the while,
We prove to you those things which certain are.
They do deny Him God; you falsely call
Him man, a body bodiless! and ah!
220
A various insanity of mind
Sinks you; which him who hath presumed to hint
You both do, sinking, sprinkle:307 for His deeds
Will then approve Him man alike and God
Commingled, and the world308 will furnish signs
225
No few.
While then the Son Himself of God
Is seeking to regain the flesh’s limbs,309
Already robed as King, He doth sustain
Blows from rude palms; with spitting covered is
His face; a thorn-inwoven crown His head
230
Pierces all round; and to the tree310 Himself
Is fixed; wine drugged with myrrh,311 is drunk, and gall312
Is mixt with vinegar; parted His robe,313
And in it314 lots are cast; what for himself
Each one hath seized he keeps; in murky gloom,
235
As God from fleshly body silently
Outbreathes His soul, in darkness trembling day
Took refuge with the sun; twice dawned one day;
Its centre black night covered: from their base
Mounts move in circle, wholly moved was earth,
240
Saints’ sepulchres stood ope, and all things joined
In fear to see His passion whom they knew!
His lifeless side a soldier with bare spear
Pierces, and forth flows blood, nor water less
Thence followed. These facts they315 agree to hide,
245
And are unwilling the misdeed to own,
Willing to blink the crime.
Can spirit, then,
Without a body wear a robe? or is’t
Susceptible of penalty? the wound
Of violence does it hear? or die? or rise?
250
Is blood thence poured? from what flesh, since ye say
He had none? or else, rather, feigned He? if
’Tis safe for you to say so; though you do
(Headlong) so say, by passing over more
In silence. Is not, then, faith manifest?
255
And are not all things fixed? The day before
He then316 should suffer, keeping Passover,
And handing down a memorable rite317
To His disciples, taking bread alike
And the vine’s juice, “My body, and My blood
260
Which is poured318 for you, this is,” did He say;
And bade it ever afterward be done.
Of what created elements were made,
Think ye, the bread and wine which were (He said)
His body with its blood? and what must be
265
Confessèd? Proved He not Himself the world’s319
Maker, through deeds? and that He bore at once
A body formed from flesh and blood?
This God,
This true Man, too, the Father’s Virtue ’neath
An Image,320 with the Father ever was,
270
United both in glory and in age;321
Because alone He ministers the words
Of the All-Holder; whom He322 upon earth
Accepts;323 through Whom He all things aid create:
God’s Son, God’s dearest Minister, is He!
275
Hence hath He generation, hence Name too,
Hence, finally, a kingdom; Lord from Lord;
Stream from perennial Fount! He, He it was
165 Who to the holy fathers (whosoe’er
Among them doth profess to have “seen God”324) -
280
God is our witness - since the origin
Of this our world,325 appearing, opened up
The Father’s words of promise and of charge
From heaven high: He led the People out;
Smote through th’ iniquitous nation; was Himself
285
The column both of light and of cloud’s shade;
And dried the sea; and bids the People go
Right through the waves, the foe therein involved
And covered with the flood and surge: a way
Through deserts made He for the followers
290
Of His high biddings; sent down bread in showers326
From heaven for the People; brake the rock;
Bedewed with wave the thirsty;327 and from God
The mandate of the Law to Moses spake
With thunder, trumpet-sound, and flamey column
295
Terrible to the sight, while men’s hearts shook.
After twice twenty years, with months complete,
Jordan was parted; a way oped; the wave
Stood in a mass; and the tribes shared the land,
Their fathers’ promised boons! The Father’s word,
300
Speaking Himself by prophets’ mouth, that He328
Would come to earth and be a man, He did
Predict; Christ manifestly to the earth
Foretelling.
Then, expected for our aid,
Life’s only Hope, the Cleanser of our flesh329
305
Death’s Router, from th’ Almighty Sire’s empire
At length He came, and with our human limbs
He clothed Him. Adam - virgin - dragon - tree,330
The cause of ruin, and the way whereby
Rash death us all had vanquisht! by the same
310
Our Shepherd treading, seeking to regain
His sheep - with angel - virgin - His own flesh -
And the “tree’s” remedy;331 whence vanquisht man
And doomed to perish was aye wont to go
To meet his vanquisht peers; hence, interposed,
315
One in all captives’ room, He did sustain
In body the unfriendly penalty
With patience; by His own death spoiling death;
Becomes salvation’s cause; and, having paid
Throughly our debts by throughly suffering
320
On earth, in holy body, everything,
Seeks the infern! here souls, bound for their crime,
Which shut up all together by Law’s weight,
Without a guard,332 were asking for the boons
Promised of old, hoped for, and tardy, He
325
To the saints’ rest admitted, and, with light,
Brought back. For on the third day mounting up,333
A victor, with His body, by His Sire’s
Virtue immense, (salvation’s pathway made,)
And bearing God and man is form create,
330
He clomb the heavens, leading back with Him
Captivity’s first-fruits (a welcome gift
And a dear figure334 to the Lord), and took
His seat beside light’s Father, and resumed
The virtue and the glory of which, while
335
He was engaged in vanquishing the foe,
He had been stripped;335 conjoined with Spirit; bound
With flesh, on our part. Him, Lord, Christ, King, God,
Judgment and kingdom given to His hand,
The father is to send unto the orb.
FOOTNOTES
260 I make no apology for the ruggedness of the versification and the obscurity of the sense in this book, further than to say that the state of the Latin text is such as to render it almost impossible to find any sense at all in many places, while the grammar and metre are not reducible to any known laws. It is about the hardest and most uninteresting book of the five.
261 Or, “consecrated by seers and patriarchs.”
262 i.e., all the number of Thy disciples.
263 Tempora lustri, i.e., apparently the times during which these “elders” (i.e., the bishops, of whom a list is given at the end of book iii.) held office. “Lustrum” is used of other periods than it strictly implies, and this seems to give some sense to this difficult passage.
264 i.e., Marcion.
265 i.e., excommunicated.
266 Complexu vario.
267 Ancipiti quamquam cum crimine. The last word seems almost = “discrimine;” just as our author uses “cerno” = “discerno.”
268 Mundo.
269 Cf. Joh_1:11, and see the Greek.
270 Whether this be the sense I know not. The passage is a mass of confusion.
271 i.e., according to Marcion’s view.
272 i.e., as spirits, like himself.
273 Mundum.
274 i.e., Marcionite.
275 See book ii. 3.
276 i.e., apparently on the day of Christ’s resurrection.
277 Replesset, i.e., replevisset. If this be the right reading, the meaning would seem to be, “would have taken away all further desire for” them, as satiety or repletion takes away all appetite for food. One is almost inclined to hazard the suggestion “represset,” i.e., repressisset, “he would have repressed,” but that such a contraction would be irregular. Yet, with an author who takes such liberties as the present one, perhaps that might not be a decisive objection.
278 “Junctus,” for the edd.’s “junctis,” which, if retained, will mean “in the case of beings still joined with (or to) blood.”
279 “Docetur,” for the edd.’s “docentur.” The sense seems to be, if there be any, exceedingly obscure; but for the idea of a half-salvation - the salvation of the “inner man” without the outer - being no salvation at all, and unworthy of “the Good Shepherd” and His work, we may compare the very difficult passage in the de Pudic., c. xiii. ad fin.
280 This sense, which I deduce from a transposition of one line and the supplying of the words “he did exhort,” which are not expressed, but seem necessary, in the original, agrees well with 1Co_7:1-40, which is plainly the passage referred to.
281 “Causa;” or perhaps “means.” It is, of course, the French “chose.”
282 i.e., you and your like, through whom sin, and in consequence death, is disseminated.
283 Here, again, for the sake of the sense, I have transposed a line.
284 i.e., “the other,” the “inner man,” or spirit.
285 i.e., through flesh.
286 i.e., in His own person.
287 I hope I have succeeded in giving some intelligible sense; but the passage as it stands in the Latin is nearly hopeless.