He will come on the clouds,[1] bringing on the day which burns as a furnace,[2] and smiting the earth with the word of His mouth,[3] and slaying the impious with the breath of His lips, and having a fan in His hands, and cleansing His floor, and gathering the wheat indeed into His barn, but burning the chaff with unquenchable fire.[4]
2. Moreover, he shall also examine the doctrine of Marcion, [inquiring] how he holds that there are two gods, separated from each other by an infinite distance.[5] Or how can he be good who draws away men that do not belong to him from him who made them, and calls them into his own kingdom? And why is his goodness, which does not save all [thus], defective? Also, why does he, indeed, seem to be good as respects men, but most unjust with regard to him who made men, inasmuch as he deprives him of his possessions? Moreover, how could the Lord, with any justice, if He belonged to another father, have acknowledged the bread to be His body, while He took it from that creation to which we belong, and affirmed the mixed cup to be His blood?[6] And why did He acknowledge Himself to be the Son of man, if He had not gone through that birth which belongs to a human being? How, too, could He forgive us those sins for which we are answerable to our Maker and God? And how, again, supposing that He was not flesh, but was a man merely in appearance, could He have been crucifled, and could blood and water have issued from His pierced side?[7] What body, moreover, was it that those who buried Him consigned to the tomb? And what was that which rose again from the dead?
3. [This spiritual man] shall also judge all the followers of Valentinus, because they do indeed confess with the tongue one God the Father, and that all things derive their existence
- ↑ Dan. vii. 13.
- ↑ Mal. iv. 1.
- ↑ Isa. xi. 4.
- ↑ Matt. iii. 12; Luke iii. 17.
- ↑ Harvey points this sentence interrogatively.
- ↑ "Temperamentum calicis:" on which Harvey remarks that "the mixture of water with the wine in the holy Eucharist was the universal practice of antiquity … the wine signifying the mystical Head of the church, the water the body."
- ↑ John xix. 34.
