Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Let us now compare the rest of his career with the scriptures. Whatever that little body of his was — since it had a bearing and a look — if it was inglorious, ignoble, without honor, then he will be my Christ, for it is exactly in such bearing and appearance that he was announced. Isaiah steps forward again: "We have announced concerning him," he says, "in his sight, that he is like an infant, like a shoot out of parched soil; there is no fair form in him, nor any splendor, and our eyes rested on him, and he possessed no beauty nor loveliness, but his aspect was without honor, lesser than that of every man." So too the Father's voice above to the Son: "As many will be appalled at you, so without glory shall your form be among men." [2] For even though at David's hands he is called comely beyond the sons of men, that is spoken of that other, allegorical condition of spiritual grace, when he girds himself with the sword of the word, which truly is his comeliness and beauty and glory. [3] But in his bodily state, according to the same prophet, he is even "a worm, and no man, the reproach of man and the scorn of the people." Nor does the prophet announce his inward quality to be otherwise. For if the fullness of the Spirit rested upon him, I recognize the rod out of the root of Jesse. Its flower will be my Christ, on whom, as Isaiah says, came to rest a breath of insight and discernment, a breath of resolve and strength, a breath of understanding and reverence, a breath of the fear owed to God. [4] For such a diversity of spiritual endowments could belong to no man except to Christ — reckoned as the flower for the grace of the Spirit, yet accounted of the stock of Jesse, to be reckoned thence through Mary. But I press my point further: if you grant him the whole bent of humility and patience and tranquility, then from these very words of Isaiah he will be Christ — the man "in affliction," who "knows how to bear weakness," who "was led like a sheep to slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer opened not his mouth," who "neither strove nor cried out, nor was his voice heard outside," who "did not break the bruised reed" — that is, the shaken faith of the Jews — and "did not quench the smoking flax" — that is, the momentary ardor of the Gentiles — such a man can be nobody else than the one the prophets foretold. [5] His conduct ought to be examined by the rule of the scriptures, distinguished, unless I am mistaken, by a twofold activity: preaching and power. But of both headings I shall so dispose that, since it has pleased us also to examine Marcion's own gospel, we shall defer the particular kinds of teachings and signs to that discussion, as being the proper ground for them; here, however, let us settle in general the sequence we have begun, showing that Christ is announced as a preacher through Isaiah: "Who among you," he says, "stands in fear of God and gives ear to the utterance of his Son?" And equally in the role of one who heals: "For it is he," the text says, "who lifted away our infirmities and carried the burden of our diseases."
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