Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
Pin.1| Book 1. 1. What set Marcellus off to write this book. 2. That he did not study even the divine scriptures with precision. 3. Marcellus on the proverbs current among the Greeks. 4. That he slandered both the church's teaching and those who preside over it.
1.1| The occasion of his writing was hatred of his brothers, and the cause of that was jealousy and envy, which have flung countless others too into the depths of evil; it was jealousy and envy, after all, that from the very beginning brought about the murder of a brother. Setting out from there, the man wrote this one book and no other, and would that he never had; and starting straight from the hearth, as the saying goes, he set himself to make war on the holy ministers of God. He left off speaking and writing against the great, thick crowd of heretics who were ravaging his own country, which is what he should most of all have done (if he had any power of saving speech in him), driving off the enemies of the church of God from the nation of the Galatians like a good shepherd, as if they were wolves and wild beasts.
1.2| But he, overlooking his own country as though it were some barren waste full of venomous creeping things, boiled over rashly and to no purpose and let loose his anger on the ministers of God; and not on ordinary ones, but on those who are distinguished in the eyes of all by the grace of God, by their life and their philosophic way of living; and not only on the living but also on those who have fallen asleep in Christ; and among these on the very ones whose fame, for their virtue in godliness and their training in the divine words, is sung throughout the whole inhabited world, so to speak. These very men he spoke ill of not once but often and in various ways, heaping slanders and false charges on them without restraint.
1.3| He has even used curses against them, as women do in a quarrel, reviling and calling down imprecations on men who had done him no wrong. That is why his writing ran out beyond what was needed to a great and immoderate length, so that his single book was completed at nearly ten thousand lines in all.
1.4| Naturally, then, having whetted a slanderous tongue against the holy ministers of God and having first practiced his irreverence and fearlessness on them, he went on next and advanced to the very summit of all, subjecting the only-begotten and beloved Son of God to godless blasphemies of a kind that it is better to hear a little later from his own lips rather than from mine.
1.5| I shall simply set his words side by side, and stop there for the moment, without bringing long arguments to oppose and overturn them, both because the men he blasphemed are not unknown or obscure persons but are known to everyone, even if he says nothing,
1.6| and because his blasphemy against the Christ of God is not something disputed and unrecognized, such as would need a great deal of more reasoned effort to refute it. The empty talk of this strange theologian is so obvious, merely by being spoken, to all who have received a share in the church's grace, small and great alike. So I shall use only brief notes alongside, giving the discourse body by sequence and order, and merely indicating in passing the absurdity of what he puts forward.
1.7| But before I come to his words, I must advise those who read the man's book, especially any who may be Galatians, not to forget the divine words of Paul the apostle, who, writing to the Galatians themselves, urged them not to desert "the one who called" them "in the grace of Christ, for another gospel" (for "there is no other," as he himself said, "except that there are some who are troubling" them "and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ");
1.8| and they must also attend to the passage in which so great an apostle, taking himself to task as well, in order to shame those who were trying to pervert the brethren, went on to say: "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed."
1.9| And taking this up again, he says it a second time: "As we have said before, so I now say again: if anyone preaches to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be accursed." And what was this, contrary to which no other gospel could be preached, but surely that very gospel which the Savior is recorded to have handed on to his disciples, when he said: "Go on your way and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit"?
1.10| For this grace of the knowledge of the holy Trinity he alone has given us, through the mystical rebirth, since neither Moses nor any of the prophets ministered this to the earlier people; for it was fitting for the Son of God alone to proclaim the Father's grace to all men, since "the law was given through Moses," but through Jesus Christ alone, as through "the only-begotten Son," "grace and truth" came about.
1.11| Hence, reasonably, in the manner of a tutor he delivered to the earlier people, who were like infants, "the elements of the beginning of the oracles of God," keeping them from the error of many gods and proclaiming that they should know one God only. But the saving grace, providing us with a knowledge above the world and angelic, openly unveiled the mystery that had formerly been kept silent for the earlier people, proclaiming that the very God beyond all things, who was known to the men of old, is at once God and Father of the only-begotten Son, and supplying to the worthy, through the Son, the power of the Holy Spirit.
1.12| From this source the church of God, receiving the holy and blessed and mystical Trinity of Father and Son and Holy Spirit for the hope of salvation through the rebirth in Christ, keeps it. And this was the gospel which it is not lawful to exchange for another gospel, which "is not another"; and the great apostle bears witness to the Galatians even to this day, crying through his letter to them: "Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you contrary to what you received, let him be accursed," warning from far in advance, as is natural, that one should not heed even bishops or rulers or teachers, if any of them should pervert the true account of the faith.
1.13| And what was this account, if not the one that teaches us to know God as Father, hands on to us the knowledge of the Son of God, and makes us eager to share in the Holy Spirit? These would be the marks of Christians alone, the holy church of God thus marking itself off from the Jewish way.
1.14| For as that way rejected the error of many gods and of the Greeks by the confession of one God, so also the church's distinctive knowledge about the Son brought something better and more, teaching us to know the same God as Father of an only-begotten Son, who is truly a son, living and subsisting. "For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son also to have life in himself," the only-begotten of God himself said in teaching,
1.15| so that the Father may be truly Father (not named so merely in voice, nor holding a false title, but in truth and in deed father of an only-begotten Son) and the Son truly Son. But the one who takes the Son to be a bare word, and testifies that he is only a word and says again and again that he was nothing other than a word, remaining within the Father who is at rest, but active in making the creation, like our own word, which is at rest in the silent and active in those who speak, would be plainly running along with some Jewish and human way of thinking, and denying the one who is truly Son of God.
1.16| If one of the Jews, at any rate, were asked whether God has a word, he would surely say yes; since every Jew would confess that he has a word and even several words. But that he also has a son, asked, he would no longer confess.
1.17| And if it is not a Jew but one of the bishops who introduces this opinion, giving him only as a Word united with God and saying that this is eternal and unbegotten and one and the same with God, bearing the different names of Father and Son but being one in essence and subsistence, would he not be plainly putting on the guise of Sabellius, and alienated from the knowledge and grace in Christ? For the ordinance of the church would not permit them to inquire or doubt or ask whether the only-begotten Son of God was and pre-existed; but with confessed and unambiguous faith, with great confidence and boldness, it teaches to confess that God is the Father of the only-begotten Son, and to think neither that the Father is the Son nor that the Son is the Father; but to worship the one as the ungenerated, eternal, without beginning, first and only Father, and to believe that the other was begotten from the Father and subsists, and is the only-begotten Son alone, and to recognize him as God, being truly Son of God.
1.18| If, then, someone were found speaking against these things, and were to define the Word of God as like the word among human beings, [how would he not be refuted,] failing to consider or reckon that nothing mortal or human ought to be ascribed to the God who is beyond all things, nor anything at all of what comes up in our own thinking? Even if the divine Scriptures, guiding their readers like infants, speak of him in rather human terms, attaching to him hands and feet and eyes and voices and words and mouth and face and countless other such things, these must be transferred to thoughts worthy of God, picturing nothing mortal or human in God. For "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth," the Savior himself taught.
1.19| But if he is spirit, it is plain that he is divine, superior to every perceptible and composite body, so that he has no perceptible word, sounded by a tongue and heard by mortal ears through utterance, and neither tongue nor voice nor face nor anything else that is set beside mortal and human reasoning.
1.20| For if the divine apostle taught that the things "which eye has not seen nor ear heard, and which have not come up into the heart of man," are such as "God has prepared for those who love him," then the giver of all these unspeakable things would himself be more unspeakable than they all, so that it would be far truer to say, in speaking of the theology concerning him, that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, and that the knowledge needed to grasp him has not "come up into the heart of men."
1.21| The same account would hold also of the begetting of the Son. And for these matters the Savior himself would be a trustworthy initiator for us, saying somewhere in these terms: "All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son."
1.22| If, then, someone were to speak against these words and, instead of daring to say that the Son, to whom the Father handed over all things, has a subsistence of his own, were to define him only as a word like the word in human beings, at one time resting quietly in God, like the silent word in us, and at another time active, like the word in us when we speak aloud; and were then to say (I do not know how) that this very Word, at a certain moment, not even four hundred whole years ago, took on flesh and through it completed the dispensation as a man, and only then became Son of God and was styled Jesus Christ, and was proclaimed king and "image of the invisible God" and "firstborn of all creation," having never been so before; and if, after such absurdity, he does not grant Christ an unbounded and unending life and kingdom even from the time he himself supposed, but brings upon him an end that is not even a happy one, nothing like what those who through him are to be counted worthy of the promises receive, the promises the Savior himself made, promising to those who love him eternal life and incorruption and immortality and the kingdom of heaven;
1.23| and if at that time, according to the hope that is awaited in these things, he were to say that for all the others the matters of the kingdom will endure through an unending age, while to Christ alone there will come a total deprivation of all these things, his kingdom coming to an end, the flesh he took on being left behind abandoned, and the Word himself, who existed beforehand in God, being separated from the body (even if that is immortal and incorruptible) and joined to God, so as to become once more one and the same with God, as he was before: what excess of impiety would be left to such a man?
1.24| This is why the testimony of the apostolic declaration is necessary against such people, which says: "Even if an angel from heaven preaches to you beyond what you received, let him be accursed." And I am moved to marvel as I observe the apostle's thinking. For as though prophesying what was to come, he was making the theology of the Savior exact for the Galatians themselves, writing right at the beginning of his letter to them in a manner newer than his custom: "Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ."
1.25| One would not, at any rate, find him writing this way to others, because none of the others to whom he wrote were, as is likely, in a like state regarding the faith. For he applied the correction to people who took Christ to be a mere man, teaching them at the very start of the letter that he is not a man. And going on, he said to the same people: "The gospel that was preached to you by me is not according to man, for I neither received it from a man nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ." Through these words he again established that Jesus Christ was not a man.
1.26| And what he was, if not a man, he made plain further on, saying: "But when God, who set me apart from my mother's womb, was pleased to reveal his Son in me." You see how clearly he proclaimed the Savior to be Son of God, and for that reason God.
1.27| And that he knew him to be Son of God even before his coming in the flesh he shows most plainly by adding in the same letter to the Galatians: "But when the fullness of time came, God sent out his Son, born of a woman." So the Father sent out one who was already Son and already existing, not one who became Son only now, but before being born of a woman; so that he who had long been Son of God might also become Son of Man, by being born "of a woman."
1.28| But he also teaches that he became the mediator of the law of Moses, defining the meaning of mediation by what he says: "What then? The law was added for the sake of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise had been made, ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one." You hear how in these words the apostle taught the Galatians to know from that time one God, and one mediator between God and angels.
1.29| This he made clear in other passages too, saying: "For God is one; and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ." But when he named him mediator "between God and men," he reasonably called him man on account of the taking on of manhood; whereas when he introduced the same one not as mediator between God and men but between God and angels, he no longer called him man, but says only "mediator," saying that the law was ordained "through angels by the hand of a mediator,"
1.30| and by a necessary distinction he made clear the name of mediator in saying: "Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one." So God could not be the mediator (for of whom would he be mediator?), nor could the mediator himself be God; for "a mediator is not of one."
1.31| He stands, then, in the middle of two. Which two, he makes plain by naming angels and God. It is the Son of God, standing between these, who, he says, received the law with his own hand from the Father and ordained it "through angels" for the first people. So from that time the Son was mediator between God and angels, before becoming "mediator between God and men."
1.32| And he was not a bare word of God, without subsistence, one and the same as God (for in that case he could not be a mediator); but he was and pre-existed as "the only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth." And he was mediating for the Father who furnished the law to men "through angels." This the apostle, teaching from that time those who were ignorant and untaught in the theology of the Son of God, sealed by saying: "A mediator is not of one." For it is not in the nature of a mediator to be defined in relation to one.
1.33| Therefore this one is not of one, but of necessity stands in the middle of two, being neither of those between whom he happens to be the middle. So we must not suppose that he is himself the God over all, nor one of the angels, but the middle and mediator between them, when he mediates between the Father and the angels; just as again, when he becomes "mediator between God and men," standing between each order, he is neither of those whose mediator he is, being neither himself the one and only God nor a man in the same way as the rest of men.
1.34| What, then, if he is none of these, but the only-begotten Son of God, who has now become mediator between men and God, and long ago, in the time of Moses, was mediator between God and angels? Writing this to them, the great apostle, handing it down in some such way, says: "The law was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.
1.35| Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one." So "God is one," and there is "one mediator" of God and of all created things, who did not begin his saving mediation only now, but already before his appearance as God to human beings, as the argument has shown.
1.36| With these points set out briefly to the Galatians themselves from their own letter alone, and with the saving faith granting the mystical rebirth "into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit," and with the catholic church of God from the earth's one boundary to its other sealing, beyond the divine writings, the testimonies of the divine Scriptures by unwritten tradition, it is now time to examine Marcellus' own words and to supply the proofs of what we have promised, so that no one may think the man is being slandered by us.
1.37| Since my aim is to set out what has been said briefly, I shall not pick out all of the man's utterances, but will use only those that hold the argument together, passing over the greater part as superfluous and running along the same lines. But before the proof of what has been said, I think I must first make plain to readers that he did not even keep an exact grasp of the obvious wording of the divine readings, so that those who do not yet know him may learn what sort of man he was when he was carried on to the daring of his statements.
2.1| For instance, the prophet Zechariah lived at the time of the return from Babylon and mentioned Jesus the high priest, evidently the son of Jozadak, who together with Zerubbabel led those who returned from Babylon. This excellent and admirable writer, not knowing this, sets down the passage of Zechariah in which he mentions Jesus, but, hurled far from the history, supposes that he is speaking about Jesus the successor of Moses.
2.2| And again, when the apostle wrote in the letter to the Galatians in this manner, "But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother," he either overlooked it, or did not understand it, or else deliberately twists the statement, writing (No. 1): "But our Jerusalem is above; for this one is in slavery with her children."
2.3| And again, when our Savior said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan, you are a stumbling block to me, because you do not think the things of God but the things of men," not grasping how the statement was made to the apostle and for what reason, he says that this was said to the devil. And he puts so many errors together under one passage, writing in these very words (No. 1): "That no name among those named on earth has become greater than that of Jesus, the gospel attests, where 'the angel' said to Mary, 'Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
2.4| "He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High.' And it is plain also from the prophecy of Zechariah, which prophesied long ago about this name: 'For the Lord showed me,' he says, 'Jesus the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord. And the devil stood at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to the devil: The Lord rebuke you, he who chose Jerusalem.'
2.5| "For when did he rebuke him? When he joined to his own Word the man he loved. 'He who chose Jerusalem,' he says, evidently this Jerusalem of ours, about which the apostle says, 'But our Jerusalem is above; for this one is in slavery with her children.'
2.6| "For then, being in that great Jerusalem, that is, in our church, he rebuked the devil according to the prophecy, saying: 'Go behind me, Satan, for you are a stumbling block to me.' This, then, is the great priest, whose type the Jesus of that time preserved.
2.7| "For it was not possible for that Jesus to be called a great priest, though he was glorious among all, when Moses was not called great (for Moses was not yet great, since he was called a servant of God and was named by God himself a god to Pharaoh).
2.8| "And if someone should think Jesus was called great for this reason, that he himself was thought worthy to bring the people into the holy land and did many other marvelous things, let him learn from this too that the greatness spoken of in the case of Jesus did not belong so much to the event that was the type as to the one who, a little later, was going to bring his own people into this great Jerusalem." You see how much he was mistaken, wandering away from the history and unable to attend to the Jesus indicated by the prophet Zechariah.
2.9| For the one was the son of Jozadak, of the tribe of the Levites, from the family of Aaron, who had received the high priesthood, and for that reason was styled a great priest, as the prophet teaches in saying: "And the Lord showed me Jesus the high priest."
2.10| But the successor of Moses, who led the people into the land of the promise and did many other marvelous things, was the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, which had nothing in common with the priesthood. How then could one who has so far missed the obvious wording and been ignorant of the bare history become competent to teach about the highest theology? And in the case of Peter likewise one ought to attend to how "Get behind me" was said to him,
2.11| and what the interpretation of the name Satan is, and why he called him a "stumbling block," and how almost at one and the same time both "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah" and "Get behind me, Satan" were said to him,
2.12| and what is the sense of the Savior's "going behind" (which he made plain himself right there, joining on directly: "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me"; and this Peter himself carried out in deed a little later, being perfected in martyrdom),
2.13| but one ought also to inquire on what grounds he called him blessed and on what grounds he rebuked him. But this man, paying attention to none of these things, declared, contrary to the Scripture, that these words were spoken to the devil.
2.14| Was this the only thing he failed to know? Did he not, going on again, mention the resurrection of our Savior, and then, wanting to show that even before him, in the prophetic times, someone is reported to have been raised from the dead, stumble again here too, saying first that the prophet Elisha raised someone from the dead, not knowing that even before Elisha the great Elijah raised the widow's son who had died, as one can learn from the third book of Kingdoms?
2.15| And he is shown to have been ignorant of this too, in the words in which he writes (No. 2): "Not only, then, does the apostle say that he is firstborn of the 'new creation,' but also firstborn 'from the dead,' for no other reason, as it seems to me, than that through the firstborn 'of the dead' it might become possible to know how he is also said to be 'firstborn of all creation.' For our Lord Jesus Christ was not the first to rise from the dead; the one raised through the prophet Elisha rose earlier, and Lazarus too rose before his resurrection, and at the time of the passion 'many bodies of those who had fallen asleep' rose."
2.16| And this too Marcellus seems to me to have set down without reflection, I mean that "many bodies of the holy ones who had fallen asleep" were raised before him. For he did not attend to the whole text of the gospel, which teaches that the bodies of the saints were raised "after his rising."
2.17| You would find him going astray also in his setting out of the apostolic saying. The divine apostle, writing to the Romans, says this: "Set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who came to be from the seed of David as to the flesh, who was marked out as Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness."
2.18| But he, with what thought I do not know, twists the apostolic wording here too. Instead of "marked out" he makes it "predestined," in order to be like those "predestined according to foreknowledge."
2.19| He says, then, in these very words (No. 16): "Just as the almighty God long ago predestined the church, so also the dispensation in the flesh of Christ, through whom he predestined the race of the godly to be called 'to adoption as sons,' having first laid its foundation in his own mind. For this reason the apostle clearly declares by the Holy Spirit, saying, 'of the predestined Son of God.'" And again he says in another place (No. 109): "This is the one of whom Paul said, 'of the predestined Son of God.'"
2.20| Here too he corrupted not only the apostolic wording but the very sense, by adding the preposition "before." He does the same sort of thing with the psalmody, which contains "from the womb I begot you before the morning star," and here too he uses an addition that is nowhere found in the text, in order to find fault with the one who does not speak as he does.
2.21| Hear, then, how he writes, saying (No. 23): "For this reason, then, it seems to me good to go through now what I have not yet gone through before."
2.22| For most of what he wrote has become clear from what we have already said. "From the womb," he says, "before the morning star I begot you forth"; for he supposed that the preposition "forth" (ex), smuggled in, would surely fall in with the opinion of his heresy. So, having taken out the most essential syllable, he wanted to signify his ancient re-begetting. And since in these matters he strenuously insisted upon his own error, blaming the one who had written rightly, he himself says nothing, yet hands on to his readers the same testimony of the reading.
2.23| Going on again, the same man introduces the Savior saying "I am the day," asserting somewhere thus (No. 25): "For since there was darkness before, through ignorance of true worship, and the day was about to appear (for 'I,' he says, 'am the day'), he reasonably names the star the morning star."
2.24| And in another place he says (No. 37): "Since after the taking up of the flesh he is proclaimed both Christ and Jesus, and life and way and day." And going on again he sets down from the apostle (No. 1): "But our Jerusalem is above."
2.25| And why should I draw this out, when anyone who wishes can gather similar things from the whole treatise out of what has been said, and look closely at the man's recklessness? From this recklessness you will hear him often calling Solomon a prophet and naming the Proverbs prophecies;
2.26| as in the passage where he says (No. 110): "For this reason the most holy prophet Solomon said, 'to receive turnings of words,' and again, 'sayings of the wise and riddles,' he names the proverb a prophecy." And again (No. 111): "For this reason it seems to me that this most wise prophet also spoke the first words of the prophecy in proverbs."
2.27| He does this a second and a third time and often, as I said, not knowing that "there are distributions of gifts," even if it is "the same Spirit," and that to one "is given a word of wisdom" according to the apostle, "to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another prophecies." So Solomon is attested as having received the gift of wisdom,
2.28| "for the Lord gave Solomon wisdom," as the Scripture says, "and he was made wiser than all men"; yet he neither had a prophetic life nor does he show, in his own words, the mark of prophecy, which is recognized by "Thus says the Lord" and the like.
2.29| But he, seeing none of this, as though doing the man a favor, calls him a prophet, not understanding that the prophets "went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, in want, afflicted, ill-treated." And he says that his Proverbs are a prophecy, when nowhere does the divine Scripture teach this, and the wisest man himself, with the divine Spirit, gave this book the name PROVERBS, the next ECCLESIASTES, and the third SONG OF SONGS,
2.30| not without God nor by human reckoning applying these titles. But he even tries to interpret the divinely inspired writing itself by Greek examples, not listening to Paul the apostle, who says: "Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God; and we speak of these things not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Holy Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not accept what belongs to the Spirit of God, for it is folly to him; and he cannot know them, because they are examined spiritually." Ignorant of all this too, the excellent man tries to set before us the meaning of the divine Proverbs out of Greek readings, writing thus in these very words:
3.1| (No. 112) "It is not out of place, I think, to remind you at present briefly of some proverbs from outside. 'EITHER HE IS DEAD OR HE TEACHES LETTERS.' One might take this proverb, going by the apparent sense of the words, as said against those who teach letters; since another of their own people said, 'You were teaching letters, and I was attending.' But those who wrote the commentaries said that this is not so; rather, they say, when the Sicilians defeated the Athenians in war, they spared only those who pleaded education, taking them as teachers for their boys, and killed all the rest; and some of these, having escaped and returned and being asked by the Athenians about certain people who mattered to them, said: 'EITHER HE IS DEAD OR HE TEACHES LETTERS.'
3.2| "And what of 'THE GOAT, THE KNIFE'? One might suppose, to set down first what is said about it, that the proverb was surely said because the goat being sacrificed looks to the knife. But the ancients did not say this; indeed it would not have been a proverb if it were so (for it was natural to think of this from what appears), but they say it is said of those who procure evils for themselves. For they say that Medea, after killing her children in Corinth, hid the knife there; and that the Corinthians, when they were sacrificing a black goat in accordance with an oracle given to them, were at a loss for a knife, and the goat, scratching with its foot, found Medea's knife and was slaughtered with it.
3.3| "And what does 'ENOUGH OF THE OAK' mean? someone asks; for it is not possible to know the proverb from what lies at hand. The ancients, as they said, before the cultivation of grain lived on acorns, and when, as they supposed, this grain was found later, giving their mind to it and rejoicing in the change, they said 'ENOUGH OF THE OAK'; and they said this was the proverb.
3.4| "And again, as to another proverb, spoken by very many of their wise men in very many and various books, it is necessary at present to recall what those who chose to interpret proverbs have written about it, [….] but in order that we may refute Asterius, who knew exactly from the outside learning the distinctive point of the proverb and in the present case pretended ignorance, so that he might seem to establish his own intention persuasively through the use of the proverbial saying. It is 'GLAUCUS' ART.' The wise men from outside who mentioned this proverb explained it in different ways.
3.5| "For one of them said that a certain Glaucus, who was skilled in some art [….] the most wonderful of many, perished together with it at sea, no one yet having learned it from him. Another, bearing witness that Glaucus had the highest experience in music, says that the bronze discs made by him were four in number, to produce a harmonious concord of notes in the striking; and that from this the proverb was said.
3.6| "Another says that among the Alyattic dedications there lies a bowl and bowl-stand, a marvel, the work of Glaucus of Chios. Another says that Glaucus himself dedicated a bronze tripod at Delphi, having so fashioned it for the [….] that when struck heavily, both the feet on which it stands and the part laid on top and the rim on the cauldron and the rods set through the middle sounded with the voice of a lyre. And yet another says that the proverb was said from a certain Glaucus who was thought to have done something more.
3.7| "You see how the difficulty of the proverb is shown by this too, that those who wished to explain this proverb did not settle on the same explanation. So hard to discover does the matter of the proverb appear to be even among those from outside. For this reason one of their wise men, collecting the proverbs spoken by many and in different ways, wrote six books on them, two in verse and four in prose.
3.8| "These they called proverbs for no other reason, as it seems to me, than that, having come upon the Proverbs of the most wise Solomon and learned through them that nothing of what is said in them can be clearly learned from what lies at hand, they themselves also, wishing to emulate the prophetic writing, wrote in the same manner as he did. Then, since they could not think of any other name more proper than that one, they called these too proverbs."
3.9| By such comparisons Marcellus tries to teach the church of God to understand the divinely inspired Scriptures. And I have set out all this long and chattering superfluity wishing to show the folly of his great and ill-timed ambition, which the man employed, in showing off Greek discourse while forgetting the divine writings.
3.10| For he would never have fallen into such nonsense if he had remembered the apostolic commands, in which Paul advises that we must speak "the things freely given to us by God, not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual,"
3.11| nor understood how it was said: "The natural man does not accept what is of the Spirit of God, for to him they are foolishness, and he cannot know them, because they are examined spiritually." Ignorant of this, he supposed that the wise men of the Greeks had knowledge of the wisdom given by God to Solomon, and that, having learned of it, they emulated the prophetic writing, as he himself says.
3.12| And how could the natural men, who did not know how to compare "spiritual things with spiritual," be able to know and emulate the divine things, when the divine apostle declared that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God? And since the same apostle said that the natural man cannot know spiritual things, "because they are examined spiritually," the excellent man, taking the opposite opinion to the apostle, asserts that those who made the Greek proverbs wrote in the same manner as Solomon.
3.13| He says, then, in these words (No. 112): "Since, having come upon the Proverbs of the most wise Solomon and learned through them that nothing of what is said in them can be clearly learned from what lies at hand, they themselves also, wishing to emulate the prophetic writing, wrote in the same manner as he did." But consider also, in another way, from the comparisons themselves, how far he missed the truth in saying that those among the Greeks wrote in the same manner as Solomon.
3.14| For Solomon, moved by wisdom given by God, devoted his whole writing to the account of true worship, for the benefit and salvation of souls, and for the exercise of the readers' minds used dark problems and turnings of words and sayings put forth through riddles. This he attests at the beginning of the book, saying: "For on hearing these things the wise man will become wiser, and the man of understanding will acquire guidance, and will understand a parable and dark words, sayings of the wise and riddles,"
3.15| and again, "to receive turnings of words." That these are so one can easily learn from what is contained in the book, which cannot be understood otherwise than by our passing from the wording at hand to the meaning seen through it; such as: "The leech had three daughters, beloved with love, and these three were not satisfied with her. And the fourth was not content to say 'Enough,'"
3.16| and: "Wisdom built herself a house, and set up seven pillars; she slaughtered her own victims, she mixed her wine in a bowl," and all the other things like these, which cannot be understood otherwise, neither from what lies at hand nor from any history, but only by metaphor and a turning of the wording. But the Greek proverbs set out have taken their origins from certain histories.
3.17| For 'EITHER HE IS DEAD OR HE TEACHES LETTERS,' he says, was said because of such and such a history, and 'THE GOAT, THE KNIFE' was said because of another action that took place; and 'ENOUGH OF THE OAK' likewise, because people who once lived on acorns stopped such food. And if some Glaucus, skilled in a certain art, was mentioned in different ways by those who later disagreed in their account of him, what is that to the divinely inspired Proverbs? For these do not, like the Greek proverbs, admit their solution from some history. Ignorantly, then, and with no experience of the contemplation of the divine Scriptures, and not only so but in opposition to the apostle, Marcellus declared that the wise men of the Greeks, having come upon the Proverbs of Solomon, learned from them and emulated the prophetic writing and wrote in the same manner as he.
3.18| With this said by us as proof that the man had not read even the divine Scriptures as one ought, it is now time to examine also the unsound opinion of his faith, in which, holding views opposed to the teaching of the church, he slandered both it and its leaders.
4.1| I shall first set down the passages in which he tries to speak against what was written rightly and in the manner of the church, slandering the writers, and all but staging a no-holds-barred contest against everyone. For one moment he makes his objection against Asterius, the next against Eusebius the Great.
4.2| And then he turns on the man of God, the truly thrice-blessed Paulinus, a man honored with the first rank in the church of the Antiochenes, who served as bishop of the Tyrians with distinction, and shone so brightly in his episcopate that the church of the Antiochenes claimed him as a good of its own.
4.3| But even this man, who lived blessedly and has been blessedly at rest, long since fallen asleep and troubling him in nothing, this admirable writer mocks. And passing on from him he makes war on Origen, who also ended his life long ago. Then he campaigns against Narcissus, and pursues the other Eusebius, and rejects all the fathers of the church together, pleased with no one at all except himself alone.
4.4| He writes, then, naming them by name and speaking ill of them all, in this manner (No. 59): "I shall begin, then, from the letter written by him, to speak against each of the things not rightly written. He has written that he believes in God the Father almighty, and in his Son, the only-begotten God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit; and he says he has learned this manner of true worship from the divine Scriptures.
4.5| "For my part, when he says this I fully accept what is said, for this is the common manner of true worship of us all, to believe in Father and Son and Holy Spirit; but when, without having aimed at the divine power, he speaks in rather human terms, through some artful contemplation, of the Father as Father and the Son as Son, it is no longer safe to praise such contemplation.
4.6| "For through such contemplation the heresy now devised by them is made to grow, which I think I can easily show clearly from his own words. For he said that one must hold that the Father is truly Father and the Son truly Son and the Holy Spirit likewise."
4.7| This Marcellus says against Asterius, displeased that he confesses that the Father must be truly Father and the Son truly Son and the Holy Spirit likewise. Hence he goes on to try to overturn, at greater length, the account of these matters. For he is willing to confess Christ only as a bare thing like the human word, and not as a Son truly living and subsisting.
4.8| And since he said that this heresy is now being devised, I must show how, going on, he mentions Origen, who lived long ago, as holding the same opinion as those now slandered by him. But I have come upon very many church writings older than Origen, and various letters of bishops and synods written long ago, through which one and the same character of faith is demonstrated.
4.9| He did not, then, rightly slander them in saying that this heresy is now being devised by those he slanders. After this, going a little further, he speaks ill not only of Asterius but also of Eusebius the Great, whose episcopate very many distinguished provinces and cities claimed as their own, in this manner (No. 29): "I shall remind you of what he himself has written, standing with the things badly written by Eusebius, so that you may know that he clearly departs from his earlier profession.
4.10| "For he has written in these very words: 'The chief point of the letter is to refer the Son's coming into being to the Father's will, and not to declare the begetting a passion of God. This is what the wisest of the fathers declared in their own treatises, guarding against the impiety of the heretics, who falsely charged God with a bodily and passible procreation of children, teaching emissions.'"
4.11| And against these words he makes a long objection in turn, after which he joins on, saying (No. 30): "So Asterius, wishing to plead for Eusebius, who had written badly, and mentioning the nature of the Father and the nature of the unbegotten, has become his own accuser. For it would have been much better to leave the depth of Eusebius' thought, as he himself wrote it, lying unexamined in its brevity, than to employ such contemplation and bring the craftiness of the writing to light."
4.12| And after other matters he adds (No. 3): "Now let us examine one saying of what was written by Asterius. For he said: 'For the Father is one, who begot from himself the only-begotten Word and firstborn of all creation.' He has written both together, only-begotten and firstborn, though there is great opposition in these names, as even the very slow of learning can easily see.
4.13| "For it is plain that the only-begotten, if he is truly only-begotten, can no longer be firstborn, and the firstborn, insofar as he is firstborn, cannot be only-begotten." And in this he blames Asterius in vain; for the voices which at one time call the Son of God only-begotten Son and at another firstborn of all creation were not his but those of the divine Scripture.
4.14| Again he joins to these words, saying (No. 76): "But abandoning true knowledge, he has now too displayed to us his artful contemplation. For not being able to establish his own purpose from the divine Scriptures, he runs back to the wisest fathers, as he thinks, saying: 'This is what the wisest of the fathers declared in their own treatises.'
4.15| "Asterius says that his own fathers pronounced a pronouncement and wrote a doctrine about God from their own choice. For the name of a doctrine belongs to human counsel and opinion.
4.16| "That this is so, the dogmatic art of the physicians sufficiently attests to us, and so do the so-called doctrines of the philosophers; and that what seems good to the senate is even now called a decree of the senate, I think no one is ignorant." Marcellus was led to say even this, forgetting the apostolic voice which says of the Savior, "having abolished the law of commandments by decrees," and he also finds fault with the need to follow the fathers, though the divine Scripture says: "Ask your father and he will tell you,
4.17| your elders, and they will say to you," and "Do not move the eternal boundaries which your fathers set." Then, indignant that he called Paulinus blessed, and at the same time again speaking ill of Eusebius, he writes thus (No. 77): "For wishing to plead for Eusebius, who had written the letter badly, first, he said, he composed the letter without setting out the doctrine in the manner of a teacher; for the writing was not addressed to the church or to the ignorant but to the blessed Paulinus, whom he called blessed for this reason, that he held the same opinion as Asterius. Since, then, we have learned who Asterius' wisest fathers are, I think it follows to speak also of the one who became teacher of Paulinus and of the others.
4.18| "For from the letter of Paulinus it would become plain to us who was also that man's teacher." And after saying some things in between, he slanders the same man again as having not rightly accepted Origen, saying thus (No. 32): "It was not in recalling gospel teaching that Paulinus wrote this, but confessing that some are moved in this way of themselves, and others have been led this way from the readings of the men mentioned earlier.
4.19| "Then finally, bringing in as a kind of crown of the demonstration, he subscribed to his own letter some sayings of Origen, as of one who could persuade better than the evangelists and the apostles. And these are the sayings: 'It is time to take up again the matter of Father and Son and Holy Spirit and go through a few of the things omitted at that time. Concerning the Father: being indivisible and without parts, he becomes Father of the Son, not by emitting him, as some suppose.
4.20| "'For if the Son is an emission of the Father and an offspring from him, such as the offspring of animals, then the one who emits and the one emitted must be a body.'"
4.21| Next, after setting out the words of Origen, he adds, saying (No. 32): "This Origen wrote, not wishing to learn from the holy prophets and apostles about the eternity of the Word, but, crediting himself with more, he rashly ventures to relate a second hypothesis of the Word." And he speaks against these things, rightly said by Origen, that one must not take the begetting of the Son's divinity to be bodily and passible, above all because he has given the Son a subsistence. And he again brings in Origen, speaking ill of him and speaking against what he had rightly written, in these words (No. 32): "That Origen, writing such things, was using doctrines of his own, is clear from the fact that he often overturns his own. In another passage, at any rate, it is fitting to recall what he says about God. He writes thus:
4.22| "'For God did not begin to be Father by being hindered, as men who become fathers are, by not yet being able to be fathers. For if God is always perfect, and the power is present with him to be Father, and it is good that he be Father of such a Son, why does he put it off and deprive himself of the good, and, so to speak, from the time he can be Father, not become Father? The same, moreover, must be said of the Holy Spirit.'
4.23| "How is it, then, that when Origen wrote this too, the blessed Paulinus, in his view, thought it not safe to hide it, but used the opposite views to establish what seemed right to himself, views of which I would say not even Origen himself could give an account?" In this Marcellus, saying that Origen contradicts himself, spoke falsely, being unable to understand that by the first citation he made clear the bodiless and impassible nature of the Father, and by the second that he begot the Son not in time but before all ages.
4.24| And again after other matters, about Origen, the same man writes this (No. 78): "And yet, if one must tell the truth about Origen, it is fitting to say this, that having only just withdrawn from the studies of philosophy and chosen to engage with the divine words before an exact grasp of the Scriptures, because of the great ambition of his outside education he began to write sooner than he should, and was led astray by the words of philosophy, and wrote some things badly because of them. And this is plain; for still mindful of Plato's doctrines,
4.25| "and of the difference of principles with him, he wrote a book ON PRINCIPLES, and gave the treatise this title. The greatest proof of this is that he took the beginning of his wording and the title of the book from nowhere else than the words said by Plato; for he wrote, beginning thus:
4.26| "'Those who have believed and been persuaded': this phrase, said in just this way, you would find in Plato's Gorgias." Yet even if it does occur there, it would bring no charge against Origen for saying "those who have believed and been persuaded," and joining on directly that grace and truth came "through Jesus Christ," and that Christ is the truth, according to what he said: "I am the truth." For what fellowship could Plato ever have with these things?
4.27| No book of Plato's called ON PRINCIPLES is recorded, nor did Origen hold the same opinion as Plato about principles, who knew one principle only, unbegotten and without beginning and beyond all things, and that this is Father of one only-begotten Son, through whom all things came to be.
4.28| But he, falsely accusing Origen in this too, adds after other matters, saying (No. 15): "For when Asterius said that the Word came to be before the ages, the very saying convicts him of lying; so that he misses not only the matter but also the letter. For if the Proverbs say, 'Before the age he founded me,' how did he himself say that he came to be before the ages? For to have been founded before the age is one thing, and to have come to be before the ages another.
4.29| Having said this and added other things to overturn the Son's having come to be before the ages, he adds in these very words (No. 79): "I ask those among the saints who read this, who have truly received these things as seeds and beginnings of this exposition, to add further proofs to what has been said, so that the choices of those who distort the faith may be refuted still more. For truly they have forsaken God who begot them, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns."
4.30| Having reviled in such words, he next tries to show that the Son is not even an image of God, saying thus (No. 80): "I think it follows to say a few words also about the image. For he has written: 'But another is the one begotten from him, "who is the image of the unseen God."' Asterius mentions the image of the invisible God in order to teach that God differs from the Word as much as a man is thought to differ from his own image.
4.31| And after saying some things in between he adds (No. 82): "It is plain, then, that before the taking up of our body the Word by himself was not an image of the invisible God. For the image ought to be seen, so that through the image what was until then unseen may be able to be seen." And he adds (No. 82): "How then did Asterius write that the Word of God is the image of the invisible God? For images are of those whose images they are, and show them even when absent, so that the absent one seems to appear through them.
4.32| "But if, God being invisible, it follows that the Word is invisible too, how can the Word by himself be the image of the invisible God, being himself invisible?" And going on, he reviles again, saying thus (No. 24): "How then do those 'full of deceit and villainy,' to speak in apostolic terms, transfer the saying to his first creation, as they suppose, when David has clearly spoken of his generation according to the flesh?
4.33| And between these passages, having stretched out a long discourse, he adds (No. 85): "What will he say to this? For I do not suppose he has anything to say about it. Nor do I think he would confess clearly and without a veil to others what he hides in his own mind, as one can plainly learn from what he has written. For he says: 'The Father is one, who begot from himself the only-begotten Word and firstborn of all creation, alone begetting one alone, perfect begetting perfect, king begetting king, Lord begetting Lord, God begetting God, the unvarying image of essence and counsel and glory and power.' These sayings clearly convict his base opinion about the divinity.
4.34| "For how can the Lord and God who has been begotten, as he himself said earlier, be an image of God? For an image of God is one thing, and God another. So if he is an image, he is not Lord or God, but an image of the Lord and God; and if he is truly Lord and God, then the Lord and God can no longer be an image of the Lord and God."
4.35| He said this with great lack of sight, not considering that a son too can at times be called a living image of his own father, when he is most like his father. This, at any rate, the Scripture teaches, which says: "And Adam lived two hundred and thirty years, and begot according to his form and according to his image, and called his name Seth."
4.36| And concerning the divinity of the Son the apostle teaches, saying: "who, existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself," and again, "who, being the radiance of the glory and the exact imprint of the subsistence." And elsewhere it is said: "For he is a radiance of eternal light, and a spotless mirror of God's working, and an image of his goodness."
4.37| Again, the apostle, in saying "having put off the old man, and put on the new, which is being renewed to full knowledge according to the image of the one who created him," is plainly teaching that it was not the flesh that was said to be the image of God.
4.38| Passing on again to the bishops, Marcellus writes thus (No. 87): "For look, what Asterius says does not grieve us so much, if he was led to write such things, as that some of those thought to preside over the church, forgetting the apostolic tradition and preferring things from outside the divine writings, have dared to write and teach such things, which hold to an error no smaller than that of those mentioned."
4.39| And after other matters he adds (No. 71): "For having come upon the letter of Narcissus, who presides over Neronias, which he wrote to a certain Chrestus and Euphronius and Eusebius, stating that Bishop Hosius asked him whether, as Eusebius of Palestine says there are two essences, he too says so, I learned from what was written that he answers that he believes there are three essences." Having said this, he passes from Narcissus to Eusebius, accusing him of confessing that the Word of God is God.
4.40| And he writes this also about him (No. 72): "For having dared to divide the Word of God and to name the Word another god, standing apart from the Father in essence and power, into what great blasphemy he has fallen one can easily learn plainly from the very sayings written by him.
4.41| "He has written in these very words: 'The image and that of which it is the image are surely not conceived as one and the same thing, but as two essences and two things and two powers, just as there are that many names.'" And these things, as though he were slandering well, he adds, saying (No. 75): "How then have these men not turned onto the same worst road as those from outside, and set out to teach and write the same things, Eusebius speaking like Valentinus and Hermes, and Narcissus like Marcion and Plato?"
4.42| Then next he strings together a long and chattering endless talk, saying that he learned by hearsay that Eusebius had once, when he was in Laodicea, held a conversation with someone; and about things he did not know, as one who had learned by hearsay, he writes; and he joins on, saying (No. 88): "One ought, on the contrary, with tears and mourning, to cry out to the Lord, 'We have sinned, we have acted impiously, we have broken the law,' and we have done evil in your sight, and now repenting we ask to obtain your kindness.
4.43| "This is what suited him, this is what it profited him to say, because of the immeasurable goodness and kindness of God. And yet it would have been consistent for God, who exercises his care with kindness and justice, to reply, saying: 'Had an enemy reproached me, I would have endured it; and if one who hated me had spoken great things against me, I would have hidden from him. But you, a man of like soul, my guide and my familiar, who together sweetened foods for me, we walked in God's house in concord.'
4.44| "For that he is with us, his ministers, we know from his own saying, for 'Behold,' he said, 'I will be with you all the days' of your life 'until the completion of the age.' Then, consistently, he would surely have added what follows to what precedes: 'Let death come upon them, and let them go down into Hades alive, for wickedness is in their hearts.' For the Scripture says that those who are dead in the ignorance of impiety are swallowed by Hades; for they were dead even while thinking they were alive."
4.45| And again next to this he accuses Eusebius of having discoursed in the church when passing through Ancyra at that time, things he says he learned by hearsay. Indignant at this, he writes such things as (No. 73): "But the apostle writes such things about the faith of the Galatians; and Eusebius, transferring the apostolic thought, on account of which the apostle, for the reason stated, said, 'My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you,' attacked the Galatians as not having a right opinion about God.
4.46| "For he was truly in a sharp and bitter labor, because he knew that the Galatians did not think about true worship as that man does, and did not speak of two essences and things and powers and gods." Observe how he bitterly abuses the man for having said nothing more, as he himself writes, than the apostolic saying. And now he confesses that Eusebius speaks of two gods, as one who speaks of the Son of God as God together with the Father; but going on in what follows, as though he had forgotten what he accused him of here, he tries to slander the same man as saying that Christ is a bare man.
4.47| Next to what is set forth he adds a great, long mass of nonsense, stringing together things that are and things that are not, almost like those who said: "Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?"
4.48| By this it is shown, as I said at the beginning of the treatise, that he leapt upon the writing out of excessive enmity and hatred of his brothers. Passing on from these, he again makes tragedy of Asterius, drawing out a long narrative about him too, how he travels abroad, and where and when and to whom. And leaving him again, he turns to the man of God Paulinus, writing this in these very words:
4.49| (No. 33) "Persuaded by these sayings, Paulinus, the father of this man, does not hesitate to say and write the same things, at one time calling Christ a second god and saying that he became god in a rather human way, at another defining him as a creature. That this is so, he also said to us once, when passing through Ancyra, that Christ is a creature."
4.50| And again, telling tales, he says that he had a discussion with Paulinus. Then he slanders the blessed man as having spoken of many gods, and leaving Paulinus he applies himself again to Eusebius, saying (No. 74): "So too Eusebius of Caesarea has written, holding himself the same opinion about gods as Paulinus and those from outside.
4.51| "For he has written, not as though there were only one God, but as though there is one who is the only true God. Hence, then, having learned this, Paulinus, the father of Asterius, supposed that there are younger gods." And in this too he accuses them of bringing in opinions of gods, while he himself denies the divinity of the Son. And having set down Eusebius' wording, he does not understand that the voice teaching that the Father alone is the true God was not his,
4.52| but our Savior's, who said: "that they may know you, the only true God." And after other matters he adds, saying (No. 27): "For from the divine sayings how will they be able to show us that one is unbegotten, and one begotten in the way they themselves have believed he was begotten, when neither the prophets nor evangelists nor apostles have said this?"
4.53| Then, as though he had entered his name in the games to strike at all together, he passes on to Narcissus and says (No. 70): "So that even if someone says that, establishing that there is a first god and a second, as Narcissus has written in these very words:
4.54| (for the one who says 'Let us make man in accordance with our image and likeness' does not allow it), that he himself and his Father are two, we have heard in part from the Lord himself bearing witness and from the holy Scriptures. If, then, Narcissus wishes for this reason to divide the Word from the Father by power, let him know that the prophet who wrote, as though God had said, 'Let us make man in accordance with our image and likeness,' himself wrote, 'And God made man.'"
4.55| And passing on from Narcissus to Asterius, he writes this (No. 63): "For Asterius declared that the Father and the Son are one and the same only in the respect in which they agree in all things. For he said thus: 'And because of the exact agreement in all words and works, "I and the Father are one."'" And again he lays hold of Eusebius, saying (No. 89): "For they wish the Savior to be a man; and this is plain from how craftily Eusebius transferred the sayings of the apostle to his own purpose.
4.56| "For as though wishing to bring forth the greatest blasphemy from some old labor pain, he 'brought forth out of his own treasure,' according to the Savior's saying, 'what is evil.'
4.57| "For wishing to show the Savior to be only a man, as though uncovering to us the greatest unspeakable mystery of the apostle, he spoke thus: 'Therefore the divine apostle, most clearly handing down to us the unspeakable and mystical theology, cries out and shouts, "God is one," and then after the one God he says, "one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."'
4.58| "If, then, he says he is a man, attending only to his dispensation in the flesh, he surely also agrees to this, that one should not have hope in him. For the prophet Jeremiah said, 'Cursed is the man who has his hope in man.'"
4.59| You see how wickedness is blind. At that time, at any rate, he himself bore witness that the man confesses the Son as God, and blamed him for this, as introducing the Word of God as God subsisting in essence and power; now he slanders the same man as saying that Christ is a bare man, plainly lying both in what he has said and in what he adds next about him, saying again (No. 90): "But the aforementioned man, caring little for the holy prophets, as though sounding forth some unspeakable and hidden theology of the apostle, said 'God is one, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.'
4.60| "And the one who wrote this, boasting greatly of remembering the Scriptures, did not consider that the most holy apostle who wrote this wrote also that: 'who, existing in God's form, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, assuming the form of a slave, becoming in the likeness of man and being found in appearance as a man.'
4.61| "You see how (as if foreseeing in the Spirit the villainy of these men) the sacred apostle wrote in another place thus the 'as a man' and 'becoming in the likeness of man,' in order to put a stop to their great blasphemy." And after other matters he slanders the same man somewhat like this (No. 91): "How then, not attending to these, does Eusebius want the Savior to be only a man?
4.62| "He does not dare to say this openly, but wishing it, he is convicted by his own sayings." And the very one who said these things blamed the same man as proclaiming the Son as God, writing thus (No. 72): "For having dared to divide the Word of God, and having named the Word another god, standing apart from the Father in essence and power, into what great blasphemy he has fallen."
4.63| Having set out so much, and much more than this, not only against the bishops but against the sound and ecclesiastical faith, Marcellus would be plain as to what sort of purpose he himself had. And that the man cared nothing for the truth you could learn by coming upon the bishops' letters themselves, in which you will find him mutilating the whole body of the sense of the words, hiding the entire connection, and seizing on little phrases and making slander of these with malice.
4.64| For instance, he slanders Eusebius openly, as having said that Christ is a bare man, because in his letter he made a citation of the apostolic voice, in which the apostle himself said: "For God is one, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."
4.65| This apostolic saying, then, the most wise man slandered as though it were Eusebius', not understanding that it was the apostle he was slandering; but Eusebius' own words, found in the same letter and in the rest of his writings composed on the divine Scriptures, which have been circulated in every place, he passed over in silence, hiding by his silence what offered him nothing to slander.
4.66| One would find that he has done the same with the other writings he slandered. These, out of regard for the proportions of this treatise, we shall leave to anyone who wishes to examine them closely, since we ourselves are eager at last to uncover Marcellus' own outlandish language about the Son of God, so that it may become plain to all what he himself thought about the Son of God.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/121-against-marcellus-book-i#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.
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