Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Let me put on the mask of Israel. Let Marcion's Christ stand up and cry: O generation without faith, for what length of time must I stay among you? For what length of time must I put up with you? He would at once have to hear from me: Whoever you may be, newcomer, first give an account of your identity, tell where it is you hail from, and state what right you hold over us. Up to now, everything about you belongs to the Creator. If it is plainly from him that you come and for him that you act, we admit the rebuke. [2] But if you come from another, tell me, if you please, what you ever committed to us of your own that we ought to have believed, that you should now reproach us for unbelief — you who have never even once revealed yourself to us? How long ago did you begin dealing with us, that you complain of the time? In what regard has your endurance of us run so deep that you'd claim credit for patience? You're that donkey from Aesop's fable-well, popping up only now — and bawling already. Let me put on, further, the mask of the disciples, on whom he sprang this same complaint. O nation lacking faith, for what length of time must I stay among you, for what length of time must I put up with you? This outburst of his I would most justly beat back in exactly this way: Whoever you may be, newcomer, give your identity first, say where you hail from, name what claim you hold over us. [3] Up to now, I take it, you belong to the Creator, and that is why we have followed you, recognizing in you everything that is his. But if it is from him that you come, we admit the rebuke. If, however, you act for another, I beg you, tell me — what have you ever, at any time, committed to us that was truly your own, that we ought already to have believed, that you should reproach us for unbelief, when you have not to this day even disclosed your author? How long ago did you begin your dealings with us, that you should now even bring up the time? And in what regard has your endurance of us run so deep that you should boast of your patience too? The ass has only just appeared out of Aesop's well — and already it is braying. [4] Who would not have beaten back the injustice of such a complaint in just this way, if he had believed it came from one who had no business complaining yet? Except that he would never have sprung this on them at all, had he not — long resident among them in the Law, in the Prophets, in mighty works and kindnesses — always found them unbelieving. But look: Christ loves little children, teaching that those who wish to be greatest must always be like them. The Creator, on the other hand, sent bears against boys, avenging the prophet Elisha for the abuse he suffered from them. [5] A shameless piece of antithesis-mongering, this, setting such unlike things side by side — little children, still innocent in age, and boys already capable of judgment, who were able to hurl abuse, not to say blasphemy. So then: the just god, sparing not even impious boys, exacts honor for greater age, and rather more from the lesser; while the good god so loves little ones that in Egypt he rewarded the midwives who protected the endangered Hebrew births against Pharaoh's edict. [6] So this very affection belongs to Christ together with the Creator. Now then, how can Marcion's god — who is hostile to marriage — be thought a lover of little children, when the whole cause of children is marriage? Whoever hates the seed must of necessity curse the fruit as well. He must be reckoned crueler even than the Egyptian king. [7] For Pharaoh only refused to let the infants be raised; this one refuses even to let them be born, snatching away the life of children still ten months in the womb. But how much more credible is it that the affection for little ones should be assigned to him who, by blessing marriage for the propagation of the human race, thereby promised, in blessing it, the very fruit of marriage — the fruit whose first stage is infancy?
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