By Water & Blood

On Cerdo and Marcion

Marcion, and Cerdo his teacher, themselves also took the starting points of blasphemy from the deceit of Simon, yet innovated another path of impiety. For Cerdo lived under Antoninus the first, and said that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is another God, unknown to the prophets, and that another is the maker of the universe and the lawgiver of the Mosaic law; and that the one is just, the other good. For the one in the law, he says, enjoins cutting out an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; but the good one in the Gospels commands the one who strikes the right cheek to turn the other also, and to the one who wishes to take the tunic to give the cloak as well. And the one in the law ordered loving the friend and hating the enemy; but the other commanded loving even the enemies. And the exceedingly thunderstruck man does not know that even in the law it is prescribed to lead back the stray ox of the enemy, and to raise up together the fallen beast, and not to overlook the enemy when he needs help; and that the one called good by him alone threatened Gehenna to the one who calls his brother a fool; and showing himself just he said, “With the measure you measure, it will be measured back to you.” But to refute these things is not for the present occasion; and besides, the blasphemy is very easily detected by those who have read the divine Scriptures.

But Marcion of Pontus, taught these things by Cerdo, was not content with the teaching handed down, but increased the impiety. For he fashioned in word four unbegotten substances; and one he called good and unknown, whom he also styled Father of the Lord; and another craftsman and just, whom he also named evil; and besides these Matter, being bad and under another who is bad. And the craftsman, prevailing over the bad one, took Matter and from this crafted the universe: from the purest, the heaven; from the rest, the four elements; from the sediment, Hades and Tartarus. Again filtering the purest of the earth, he constructed, he says, paradise; and taking from this one clod, he molded Adam, giving him the soul from his own substance. From this, he says, is the conflict of soul and body—the body striving to drag the soul down to that Matter, and the soul trying to pull the body up to the Craftsman. These men also dare to say that the serpent is better than the Craftsman. For the one hindered partaking of the tree of knowledge, but the other strongly urged it. And the impious did not understand that the counsel of the serpent brought forth death. Immediately, then, some of them also honor the serpent. And I myself found among them a bronze serpent lying in a certain box together with their foul mysteries.

They blaspheme not only the Maker, but also call the patriarchs and the prophets lawless, so as to show the Craftsman a lover of the wicked. This man accepted from the Gospels only that according to Luke, cutting away the genealogy for the most part; and he cast out the law and the prophets and the whole Old Testament, as given by an alien God. He says that our Lord Jesus Christ came down so as to free those who have believed in him from the slavery of the Craftsman; and that he seemed to be a man while having nothing human, and seemed to suffer while having suffered in no way at all. He also cast out the resurrection of bodies, supposing this impossible to come to be. This man said that Cain and the Sodomites and all the other impious had enjoyed salvation, having approached the Savior Christ in Hades and been taken up into the kingdom; but that Abel and Enoch and Noah and the patriarchs and the remaining prophets and the righteous did not share in the freedom given to those, not wishing to run to him. For this reason, he says, they were also condemned to inhabit Hades. Such things Marcion raged against the one who made him—or rather things far harsher even than these; for I have handed over the greater blasphemies to silence.

I know one certain old man of these, ninety years old, who rising at dawn washed his own face with the residue of spit, and when asked the reason said that he did not wish to be in need of the Craftsman and to take water from that one’s creations. And when those present said, “How then do you eat and drink and clothe yourself and sleep and perform the so-called mysteries?” taking up, he said that he does this from necessity, because otherwise he can neither live nor perform the mysteries. And the madman unwillingly confessed that the one called good by him has nothing, but that he enjoys all good things from the creations of the Craftsman. Leaving most things aside, I shall pass on to the continuous parts of the writing. For this gathering again was divided into many segments.