λικαὶ) covenants given to the human race:[1] one, prior to the deluge, under Adam; the second, that after the deluge, under Noah; the third, the giving of the law, under Moses; the fourth, that which renovates man, and sums up all things in itself by means of the gospel, raising and bearing men upon its wings into the heavenly kingdom.
9. These things being so, all who destroy the form of the gospel are vain, unlearned, and also audacious; those, [I mean,] who represent the aspects of the gospel as being either more in number than as aforesaid, or, on the other hand, fewer. The former class [do so], that they may seem to have discovered more than is of the truth; the latter, that they may set the dispensations of God aside. For Marcion, rejecting the entire gospel, yea rather, cutting himself off from the gospel, boasts that he has part in the [blessings of] the gospel.[2] Others, again (the Montanists), that they may set at nought the gift of the Spirit, which in the latter times has been, by the good pleasure of the Father, poured out upon the human race, do not admit that aspect [of the evangelical dispensation] presented by John's Gospel, in which the Lord promised that He would send the Paraclete;[3] but set aside at once both the gospel and the prophetic Spirit. Wretched men indeed! who wish to be pseudo-prophets, forsooth, but who set aside the gift of prophecy from the church; acting like those (the Encratitæ)[4] who, on account of such as come in hypocrisy, hold themselves aloof from the
- ↑ A portion of the Greek has been preserved here, but it differs materially from the old Latin version, which seems to represent the original with greater exactness, and has therefore been followed. The Greek represents the first covenant as having been given to Noah, at the deluge, under the sign of the rainbow; the second as that given to Abraham, under the sign of circumcision; the third, as being the giving of the law, under Moses; and the fourth, as that of the gospel, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
- ↑ The old Latin reads, "partem gloriatur se habere Evangelii." Massuet changed partem into pariter, thinking that partem gave a sense inconsistent with the Marcionite curtailment of St. Luke. Harvey, however, observes: "But the gospel here means the blessings of the gospel, in which Marcion certainly claimed a share."
- ↑ John xiv. 16, etc.
- ↑ Slighting, as did some later heretics, the Pauline epistles.
