Immediately following arguing against the apparent Marcionite position that the Creator should be blamed for the creation of the devil we read:
I've always argued that most everything written about 'the Marcionite tradition' in a broad sense is complete garbage. Now it is confirmed.Therefore it is that God, who until the man had sinned had from the beginning been solely good, from thenceforth became a judge, stern and, since the Marcionites will have it so, cruel. The woman is straightway condemned to bring forth in sorrow, and to be in service to her husband. Previously she had been taught of the increase of mankind without any cause for grief, in the words of the blessing, Increase and multiply,a no more than that: she had also been intended for a help to the man, not for servitude to him. Straightway also the earth is cursed, which had previously been blessed: straightway there are thorns and thistles where before there had been grass, when it was fruitful of the green herb and of trees. Straightway there is sweat and toil for bread, though before from every tree there was livelihood without stint, and food in sure supply. From now on the man is bent down towards the earth, who before was taken out of the earth: from now on turned towards death, though previously towards life: from now on in coats of skins, who before had been naked and unashamed. Thus the goodness of God came first, as his nature is: his sternness came afterwards, as there was reason for it. The former was ingenerate, was God's own, was freely exercised: the latter was accidental, adapted to need, an expedient. For as it was not right that nature should hold its goodness in restraint and inoperative, neither was it seemly that reason should dissemble and escape its sternness. The former was God's duty paid to himself, the latter his duty to circumstances. Begin next to accuse the office of judge of being in kinship with evil. That is why you have dreamed up another god whose sole attribute is goodness: a judge, you cannot away with. Yet I have proved that this god also is a judge—or, if not a judge, unquestionably perverse and ineffective, establishing a rule of conduct he has no intention of enforcing, no intention, that is, of bringing under judgement. When you express approval of a god who is no judge, it is not the God who is a judge whom you express disapproval of: you will be forced, no question of it, to lay accusation against justice itself—for this it is that causes any man to be a judge—classing it as one of the varieties of evil: which means that you will have to include injustice among the subheadings of goodness. Justice is an evil thing only if injustice is a good one. But since you are compelled to pronounce injustice one of the worst of things, by the same method of reckoning you are forced to rank justice among the best things: for everything hostile to evil is good, even as nothing that is hostile to the good can help being evil. Consequently, in
so far as injustice is an evil thing, to the same extent justice is a good thing. Nor is it to be reckoned as merely a variety of goodness, but as the safeguard of it, because unless goodness is governed by justice so as itself to be just, it cannot be goodness: for it will be unjust. Nothing that is unjust can be good, and everything that is just is bound to be good. [Against Marcion 2:11]