On the Flesh of Christ:
Marcion, with the purpose of denying Christ's flesh, also denied his nativity: or else, with intent to deny his nativity, denied his flesh. Evidently his intention was that nativity and flesh should not give mutual testimony each to the other, inasmuch as there can be neither nativity without flesh nor flesh without nativity-- as though he too could not by the same heretical licence either have admitted the flesh and denied the nativity, as did Apelles his pupil and subsequent renegade, or else, admitting both flesh and nativity, have put a different meaning upon them, as did his fellow-pupil and co-renegade Valentinus. And moreover, as he was the first to make the suggestion that Christ's flesh was putative, he could equally well have invented a phantasm of a nativity, so that the Virgin's conception and pregnancy and child-bearing,
no less than the order of the life of the Child himself (et ipsius exinde infantis ordo), might have been held docetically: they would have deceived the same eyes and the same minds as the supposition of flesh played tricks with. (1)
Notice also that Marcion is said to have been the master of Valentinus and Apelles.
Prescription:
APPEAL, therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures, nor must the contest be carried on concerning points where victory is impossible or
uncertain or too little uncertain. For even though the discussion from the Scriptures should not so result as to place each side in an equal position,
the order of things (ordo rerum) would demand that this point should first be decided—the point which alone now calls for discussion, namely : Who holds the Faith to which the Scriptures belong ? From whom and through whom, and when, and to whom was the doctrinal teaching delivered whereby men are made Christians ? For wheresoever it shall appear that the true Christian religion and faith exist, there will be found the true Scriptures and interpretations and all Christian traditions. (19)
Afterwards, as he (Paul) himself relates,1 he "went up to Jerusalem to see Peter," because of his office, and by right of course of an identical faith and preaching. For they would not have wondered at his having become a preacher from a persecutor if he had preached anything contrary to their teaching; nor would they have "glorified the Lord" if Paul had presented himself as His adversary. Accordingly they "gave him the right hand,"2 the sign of concord and agreement, and arranged among themselves a distribution of office (et inter se distributionem officii ordinauerunt), not a division of the Gospel, namely, that each should preach not a different message, but the same message to different persons, Peter to the Circumcision, Paul to the Gentiles. (23)
IF, then, it is incredible either that the Apostles were ignorant of the full scope of their message, or that they did not publish to all the whole plan
of the Rule of Faith (non omnem ordinem regulae omnibus edidisse), let us see whether, perchance, whilst the Apostles indeed preached simply and fully, the Churches through their own fault received it otherwise than as the Apostles used to set it forth. All these incitements to hesitancy you will find thrust forward by heretics. (27)
LET me, however, return from this digression to discuss the priority of Truth and the lateness of falsehood, with the support of that parable 1 which places first the good seed of the wheat sown by the Lord, and afterwards brings in the corruption of the barren weed of the wild oats by His enemy the Devil. For properly this parable represents the difference of doctrines; since the Word of GOD is also in other places likened to seed. Thus from
the very order itself it is made manifest that what was first delivered is from the Lord (Ita ex ipso ordine manifestatur id esse dominicum
et uerum quod sit prius traditum), and true; and on the other hand, that what was afterwards introduced is strange and false. This sentence will stand against all later heresies which possess no conscientious ground of confidence whereby to claim the truth for their own side.
BUT if any heresies dare to plant themselves in Apostolic times, so as to be thought thereby to have been handed down by the Apostles because they
existed under the Apostles, we can say : "Let them set forth the earliest beginnings of their Churches; let them unfold the order of their bishops (euoluant ordinem episcoporum suorum) coming down by succession from the beginning in such a manner that their first bishop had for his ordainer and predecessor one of the Apostles or of those Apostolic men who never deserted the Apostles."
For in this way Apostolic Churches declare their origin : as, for instance, the Church of the Smyrnaeans records that Polycarp 1 was placed
there by John; and the Roman Church that Clement was ordained thereto by Peter (sicut Romanorum Clementem a Petro ordinatum est). And
exactly in the same way the rest of the Churches can produce persons who, ordained to the episcopate by Apostles, became transmitters of the
Apostolic seed. (31, 32)