Against Marcellus

The motive of his writing was hatred of his brothers, and its cause was jealousy and envy, which have hurled countless others into the depths of evil as well; it was jealousy and envy, after all, that brought about the murder of a brother at the very beginning. Setting out from this, the man wrote this one treatise, and only this one (would that he had never written it!), and from the very first, starting at the hearth, he set himself to make war on the holy ministers of God. He left aside speaking and writing against the great and numerous band of heretics who were ravaging his own country, which is just what he above all ought to have done (if he had any power of saving speech), driving off the enemies of the church of God from the nation of the Galatians like wolves and wild beasts, after the manner of a good shepherd.

But he overlooked his own country, like a waste land full of creeping venomous things, and without cause and in vain he boiled over and let loose his anger on the ministers of God; and not on ordinary ones, but on those who by the grace of God are most distinguished among all for their life and philosophic conduct; and not only on the living but also on those who have fallen asleep in Christ; and of these, on those above all whose fame, for the excellence of their piety and their training in the divine words, is sung, so to speak, through the whole world. These very men he mentioned with abuse not once but many times and in various ways, making his accusations and slanders against them unsparingly.

He has even used curses against them, like women in a quarrel, reviling and cursing men who had done him no wrong. That is why his writing has run on beyond what was needed to a great and immoderate length, so that his one book is made up of close to ten thousand lines.

It is no wonder, then, that having sharpened a slandering tongue against the holy ministers of God, and having first practised his irreverence and fearlessness on them, he went on from there to the very summit of all things, and subjected the only-begotten and beloved Son of God to such godless blasphemies. What they are, it is better to hear a little later from him speaking, not from me.

I shall make use of the setting out of his own words, and I shall stop there for the present, without bringing long arguments to oppose and overturn them, because the men he blasphemed are not unknown or obscure persons, but are known to everyone even if I keep silent,

and because the blasphemy against the Christ of God is not something disputed or unrecognized, so as to need great and more reasoned effort to refute it. The empty talk of this strange theologian is plain to all who have shared in the grace of the church, small and great alike, once it has merely been stated. Therefore I shall use only brief comments in passing, giving the discussion a body by sequence and order, and pointing out only the absurdity of what he puts forward.

But before I come to his words, I would of necessity advise those who read the man's treatise, especially any who are Galatians, not to forget the divine voice of Paul the apostle, who, writing to the Galatians themselves, urged them not to turn “from the one who called” them “in the grace of Christ to another gospel” (“there is no other,” as he said, “only there are some who trouble” them “and want to pervert the gospel of Christ”),

and of necessity to pay attention also to the words in which that great apostle, rebuking even himself so as to shame those who were trying to pervert the men, added: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we preached to you, let him be anathema.”

He takes this up again and repeats it, saying: “As we have said before, so now I say again: if anyone preaches to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be anathema.” And what was this, beside which no other gospel might be preached, if not surely that very thing which the Saviour is recorded to have handed on to his disciples when he said: “Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”?

For he alone has given us this grace of the knowledge of the holy Trinity through the mystical rebirth; neither Moses nor any of the prophets ministered it to the former people. For it was fitting for the Son of God alone to preach the Father's grace to all people, since “the law was given through Moses,” but “grace and truth” came through “Jesus Christ” alone, as through the “only-begotten Son.”

Hence it was fitting that Moses, after the manner of a tutor, handed on to the former people, who were still infants, “the elementary principles of the oracles” of God, keeping them from the error of many gods and proclaiming that they should know one God only. But saving grace, granting us a knowledge above the world and like that of angels, openly revealed the mystery that had been kept silent from the former people of old: proclaiming that the very God who is beyond all things, the God known to the men of old, is at the same time God and Father of the only-begotten Son, and supplying to the worthy the power of the Holy Spirit through the Son.

From that beginning, in a way, the church of God received the holy, blessed and mystical Trinity of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, for the hope of salvation through rebirth in Christ, and guards it. And this was the gospel which it is not lawful to change “for another gospel, which is no other,” as the great apostle still testifies to the Galatians even now, crying out 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 anathema.” He was warning them long beforehand, it seems, not to heed bishops or rulers or teachers if any of them should pervert the true word of the faith.

And what was this gospel, other than the one that teaches us to know God as Father, and hands on 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; it is in this way, more or less, that the holy church of God is marked off from the Jewish way.

For as Moses rejected the polytheistic error of the Greeks by the confession of one God, so the church's special knowledge concerning the Son has procured something better and greater, teaching us to know the same God as Father of an only-begotten Son, who is truly a Son, living and subsisting. For the only-begotten of God himself taught us, saying, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself,”

so that the Father may be truly Father (not bearing the title merely in word, nor possessing a false name, but Father of an only-begotten Son in truth and in fact), and the Son truly Son. But the man who supposes that the Son is a mere word, and protests that he is only a word, and often says this very thing, that he was nothing other than a word, remaining within while the Father is at rest, but active in fashioning creation, like our own word, which is at rest when we are silent and active when we speak: such a man would plainly be running together with a Jewish and human way of thinking, and denying the true Son of God.

At any rate, if anyone asked one of the Jews whether God has a word, he will surely say yes; for every Jew would confess that he has words, many of them. But that he has a Son as well, he would no longer confess if asked.

But if not a Jew but one of the bishops should introduce this opinion, granting him only a Word united with God, and saying that this Word is eternal and unbegotten and one and the same with God, called by the different names of Father and Son but one in substance and hypostasis, how would he not plainly be slipping into the guise of Sabellius and be estranged from the knowledge and grace that is in Christ? For the ordinance of the church would not allow them to inquire, or doubt, or ask whether the only-begotten Son of God was and pre-existed. With a faith confessed and undoubted, with great boldness and freedom, it teaches us to confess that God is Father of the only-begotten Son, and not to think that the Father is the Son or the Son the Father; but to worship the Father as unbegotten, eternal, without beginning, first and alone, and to believe that the Son was begotten of the Father and came to subsist, and is the only-begotten Son alone, and to acknowledge him as God, since he is truly Son of God.

If, then, someone should appear to contradict this, and should define the Word of God as like the word in human beings, how would he not be convicted of not understanding or reckoning that one must attribute nothing mortal or human to the God beyond all things, nothing at all of what rises into our minds? Even if the divine Scriptures, educating their readers like infants, speak of him in a rather human way, attributing to him hands and feet and eyes and voices and words and mouth and face and countless other such things, we must transfer these to conceptions worthy of God, imagining nothing mortal or human to be in God. For “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth,” as the Saviour himself taught.

And if he is spirit, he is clearly divine spirit, superior to every perceptible and composite body, so that he has no perceptible word, sounded out by a tongue and heard by mortal ears through utterance, nor tongue nor voice nor face nor anything else comparable to mortal and human reasoning.

For if the divine apostle taught that the things “God has prepared for those who love him” are such that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man,” then the giver of all these unspeakable things would himself be more unspeakable than all of them; so that it would be much truer to say, in theology about him, that eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has the knowledge that grasps him “entered the heart of men.”

The same argument would hold also concerning the Son's generation. Of these things the Saviour himself would be a worthy revealer of mysteries for us, saying something like this: “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.”

If, then, someone should speak against this, and should not dare to say that the Son, to whom the Father has handed over all things, subsists, but should define him only as a Word like that in human beings, at one time resting in God, like our word when we are silent, at another active, like our word uttered when we speak; and should then say that this Word, at a certain time not even four hundred whole years ago, took on flesh (I do not know how) and through it completed the human dispensation, and that then he became Son of God and was called Jesus Christ and was proclaimed king, and was shown to be the image “of the invisible God” and the firstborn “of all creation,” not having been so before; and then, on top of such great absurdity, should not even grant to Christ, from the time he supposed, endless and unending life and kingdom, but should bring on him an end, not a happy one, nor such as he brings to those who through him will be counted worthy of the promises which the Saviour himself has promised, when he pledged eternal life and incorruption, immortality and the kingdom of heaven to those who love him;

and if then, in the expected fulfilment of this hope, he should say that for all others the things of the kingdom will last for an unending age, but that for Christ alone there will be a sudden deprivation of all of them, his kingdom ceasing and the flesh which he assumed being left deserted, while the Word himself, pre-existing in God, is separated from the body (even though it is immortal and incorruptible) and joined to God, so as to become once again one and the same with God, as he was before: what excess of impiety would remain beyond this?

That is why the testimony of the apostolic warning is necessary for such people, which says: “Even if an angel from heaven should preach contrary to what you received, let him be anathema.” And I am moved to wonder as I consider the apostle's mind. For as if foretelling the future, he gave the Galatians themselves an exact account of the theology of the Saviour, writing right at the beginning of his letter to them, in a newer way than usual: “Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ.”

One would not find him writing this way to others, since presumably no others were of the same mind about the faith as those to whom he was writing. For he was offering correction to men who supposed Christ to be a mere man, teaching at the beginning of the letter that he is not a man; and going on he said to the same people: “The gospel which was preached to you is not according to man, nor did I receive it from a man, nor was I taught it, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” By this he again showed that Jesus Christ was not a man.

And what he was, if not a man, he made clear as he went 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 plainly he proclaimed the Saviour Son of God, and for that reason God.

And that he knew him to be Son of God before his coming in the flesh, he shows most clearly when he adds in the same letter to the Galatians: “But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman.” Therefore it was not now, but before he was born of a woman, that the Father sent him, being Son and pre-existing; so that he who was of old Son of God might become also Son of Man, being born “of a woman.”

He also teaches that he became the mediator of the law of Moses, defining the meaning of the mediation in these words: “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was 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 themselves, from that time on, to know the one God, and the one mediator of God and the angels.

He showed this in another place too, saying: “For God is one; there is also one mediator of God and men, the man Jesus Christ.” But when he named him mediator “of God and men,” he rightly called him a man because of his becoming man; when, however, he presented the same one as mediator not of God and men but of God and angels, he no longer named him a man, but calls him only mediator, saying that the law was ordained “through angels by the hand of a mediator,”

and of necessity making the name “mediator” clear by a distinction, in saying: “Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one.” So God would not be the mediator (for of whom would he be mediator?), nor would the mediator himself be God; for “a mediator is not of one.”

He stands, then, between two. Who these are, he makes clear by naming angels and God. Between them, he says, the Son of God received the law in his own hand from the Father and ordained it “through angels” for the first people. So the Son was from that time mediator of God and angels, before he became “mediator of God and men.”

And he existed not as a mere word of God, without hypostasis, being one and the same with God (for in that case he would not be a mediator), but he was and pre-existed as “the only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth.” And he was acting as mediator for the Father, who was giving the law to men “through angels.” Teaching this from that time to those who were ignorant and untaught in the theology of the Son of God, the apostle set his seal on it by saying: “Now a mediator is not of one.” For it is not in the nature of a mediator to be defined in terms of one.

Therefore he is not of one, but of necessity between two, being neither of those between whom he happens to be; so that one must not think him to be the God over all, nor one of the angels, but between them and their mediator, when he mediates for the Father and the angels; just as again, when he becomes “mediator of God and men,” being between each order he is neither of those whose mediator he is: neither is he himself the one and only God, nor a man in the same way as other men.

What, then, if he is none of these, except the only-begotten Son of God, who has now become mediator of men and God, but long ago, in the time of Moses, was mediator of God and angels? Writing this to them, the great apostle hands it on in these words: “The law, ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.

Now a mediator is not of one, but God is one.” “God,” then, is “one,” and there is “one mediator of God” and of all things that have come into being, who did not begin his saving mediation now, but was mediator even before his divine appearing among men, as the argument has shown.

These things have been briefly set before the Galatians themselves from their own letter alone. The saving faith grants the mystical rebirth “into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; and, besides the divine writings, the catholic church of God from the ends of the earth to the ends sets its seal on the testimonies from the divine Scriptures out of unwritten tradition. It is time now to examine the words of Marcellus and to give the proofs of what we promised, so that no one may think that the man is being slandered by us.

Since my aim is to set out what he said briefly, I shall not collect all the man's words, but use only the essential ones, passing over most of them as superfluous and running through the same points. But before demonstrating what he said, I think I must first show readers that he did not even get the obvious words of the divine readings right, so that those who still do not know him may learn what sort of man he was who was led on to the boldness of what he said.

To begin with, then: the prophet Zechariah, who lived in the time of the return from Babylon, mentioned Jesus the great priest, that is, the son of Jozadak, who together with Zerubbabel led those who returned from Babylon. This noble and admirable writer, not knowing this, sets down the passage of Zechariah in which he mentions Jesus, but, thrown far off from the history, he supposed that the prophet was speaking of Jesus the successor of Moses.

And again, when the apostle wrote in the Letter to the Galatians in this way, “But the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother,” he either forgot, or did not understand, or even deliberately distorted the saying, writing: “But our Jerusalem is above; for she is in slavery with her children.”

And again, when our Saviour said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me, because you are not minding the things of God but the things of men,” not understanding how the word was spoken to the apostle and for what reason, he says it was said to the devil. He puts so many errors together in one passage, writing word for word as follows: “That no name among those named on earth has been greater than that of Jesus, the gospel bears witness, where ‘the angel’ said to Mary: ‘Do not be afraid, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus.

He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High.’ And it is clear also from the prophecy of Zechariah, which prophesied of old about this name. For he says: ‘The Lord showed me Jesus the great priest, standing before the face of 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, who has chosen Jerusalem.’

For when did he rebuke him? When he united to his own Word the man beloved by him. ‘Who has chosen Jerusalem,’ he says, clearly this our Jerusalem, about which the apostle says: ‘But our Jerusalem is above; for she is in slavery with her children.’

For it was then, being in that great Jerusalem, that is, in our church, that 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.

For it was not possible for that man to be called a great priest, though he had become glorious in all things, when Moses was not named great (for Moses was not yet great, although he was called servant of God, and was named by God himself god of Pharaoh).

But if anyone thinks that Jesus was called great because he was counted worthy to bring the people into the holy land and did many other wonderful things, let him know also from this that the greatness spoken of Jesus did not so much belong to the typical event, as to the one who was a little later going to bring his own people into this great Jerusalem.” You see how ignorant he was, having wandered from the history and being unable to attend to the Jesus whom the prophet Zechariah made known.

For that man was the son of Jozadak, of the tribe of the Levites, from the family of Aaron, who had received the high priesthood, and for this reason he was called great priest, as the prophet teaches when he says: “And the Lord showed me Jesus the great priest.”

But the successor of Moses, who led the people into the land of promise and did many other wonderful things, was the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, which had nothing to do with the priesthood. How, then, could a man who so failed to understand the plain wording and was ignorant of the bare history be a worthy teacher of the highest theology? And in the case of Peter he ought likewise to have considered how “Get behind me” was said to him,

and what the meaning of the name Satan is, and why he called him a “stumbling block,” and how at almost one and the same time both “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah” and “Get behind me, Satan” were said to him,

and what the meaning is of “going behind” the Saviour (which he himself explained at once by adding next: “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”; and this Peter himself did in deed a little later, being perfected by martyrdom),

and he ought also to have asked for what things Christ called him blessed and for what he rebuked him. But he paid attention to none of this and declared, contrary to Scripture, that these words were said to the devil.

Was this, then, the only thing he did not know? Does he not, going further, mention the resurrection of our Saviour, and then, wishing to show that even before him, in the times of the prophets, someone is recorded to have been raised from the dead, go wrong here too, saying that Elisha the prophet was the first to raise someone from the dead? He did not know that even before Elisha the great Elijah raised up the widow's son who had died, as one can learn from the Third Book of Kingdoms.

He appears to have been ignorant of this too, from what he writes as follows: “So the apostle says he is not only the 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 be possible to know how he is also called ‘firstborn of all creation.’ For our Lord Jesus Christ was not the first to rise from the dead; the one raised through Elisha the prophet rose before him, and Lazarus rose before his resurrection, and at the time of the passion ‘many bodies of those who had fallen asleep’ rose.”

This too Marcellus seems to me to have put down without consideration: I mean that “many bodies of the saints 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 resurrection.”

You would find him going wrong also in setting out a saying of the apostle. For the divine apostle, writing to the Romans, says this: “set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was declared Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness.”

But he, with what intention I do not know, distorts the apostle's wording here too, making “predestined” instead of “declared,” so that Christ may be like those who were predestined “according to foreknowledge.”

So he says, word for word: “Just as Almighty God long ago predestined the church, so also he predestined the dispensation of Christ according to the flesh, through which he predestined to call the race of the godly ‘to adoption,’ having first laid its foundation in his own mind. For this reason the apostle, by the Holy Spirit, clearly proclaims beforehand, saying ‘of the Son of God who was predestined.’” And again he says elsewhere: “This is the one of whom Paul said, ‘of the Son of God who was predestined.’”

Here too he has corrupted not only the apostle's wording but also the very sense, by adding the preposition “pre-.” And doing much the same, when the psalm contains “From the womb before the morning star I begot you,” he uses here too an addition that is nowhere found, in order to find fault with the one who does not speak as he does.

Listen, then, to how he writes, saying: “For this reason, then, it seems good to me now to go through also what I have not yet gone through before.

For most of what he has written has become clear from what we have already said. ‘From the womb,’ he says, ‘before the morning star I begot you.’ For he thought, surely, that if the preposition ‘out of’ (ex) were stolen, the text would run together with the opinion of his heresy. Therefore he took out the most proper part of the syllable and wanted it to signify his ancient generation. And since in this he contended strongly for his own error, blaming the one who wrote correctly, though he himself says nothing, he hands on to his readers the same evidence for the reading.”

Going on again, the same man presents the Saviour as saying “I am the day,” putting it like this: “For since there was darkness before, because of ignorance of godliness, and the day was about to appear (for ‘I am,’ he says, ‘the day’), he rightly names the star ‘morning star.’”

And in another place he says: “Since after the taking up of the flesh he is preached as Christ and Jesus, life and way and day.” And again, going on, he sets down the apostle's words as: “But our Jerusalem is above.”

But why must I go on at length, when anyone who wishes can gather from the whole treatise things like those already mentioned and observe the man's carelessness? Out of this carelessness you will hear him often calling Solomon a prophet and naming the Proverbs prophecies;

as in these words: “For this reason the most holy prophet Solomon said ‘to receive the turns of words’”; and again, “‘the sayings of the wise and riddles,’” he calls the proverb prophecy; and again: “Therefore it seems to me that this most wise prophet said even the first words of the prophecy in the manner of proverbs.”

He does this a second and third time and often, as I said, not knowing that “there are varieties of gifts” though “the same Spirit,” and that, according to the apostle, to one “is given the word of wisdom,” “to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another prophecies.” Solomon, therefore, is testified to have received the gift of wisdom:

“and the Lord gave Solomon wisdom,” as Scripture says, “and he became wiser than all men”; but he had neither a prophet's way of life nor does he show in his own words the character of prophecy, which is recognized from “Thus says the Lord” and similar phrases.

But he, seeing none of this, calls him a prophet as if doing the man a favour, not understanding that the prophets “went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated.” And he says that his Proverbs are prophecy, though the divine Scripture nowhere teaches this, and though the most wise man himself, with the divine Spirit, gave this book the name PROVERBS, the other ECCLESIASTES, and the third SONG OF SONGS,

not giving these titles without God or by human reasoning. Moreover, he tries to interpret this inspired writing itself through Greek examples, not heeding Paul the apostle, who says: “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things freely given us by God; which things we also speak, 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 receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Ignorant of this too, the noble fellow tries to set before us the meaning of the divine Proverbs from Greek readings, writing in these very words as follows:

“There is nothing out of place, I think, in reminding you at present of a few of the proverbs from outside. This proverb, according to the surface of the letter, one might suppose was said against those who teach letters, since another of their writers said, ‘You taught letters, and I attended school.’ 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 claimed to be educated, taking them as teachers for their children, and killed all the others; and when some of these escaped and returned and were asked by the Athenians about certain of their friends, they said that they had said …

And what might one think was meant by — to set down first what is said about it — surely one would think the proverb was said because the goat being sacrificed looks at the knife. But this is not what the ancients said; for what was said would not have been a proverb if that were so (for that is what one would naturally take from the surface); but they say it is said of those who bring evil on themselves. For they say that Medea, having killed her children in Corinth, hid the knife there; and that the Corinthians, offering a black goat according to an oracle given them, were at a loss for a knife; but the goat, scratching with its foot, found Medea's knife and was sacrificed with it.

What does ENOUGH OF THE OAK mean? someone asks; for one cannot know the proverb from the surface. The ancients, they said, ate acorns before the farming of grain; when this crop was later found, as they thought, they turned their minds to it and, rejoicing at the change, said ENOUGH OF THE OAK; and this, they said, is the proverb.

And again, since another proverb has been used by very many of their wise men in very many different books, it is necessary at present to recall what those who undertook to interpret proverbs have written about it, … but so that we may refute Asterius, who from outside learning knew exactly the special character of a proverb, but at present pretended ignorance, so that he might seem to establish his own intention persuasively by using a proverbial saying. It is THE ART OF GLAUCUS. The wise men from outside who mentioned this proverb explained it in different ways.

For one of them said that a certain Glaucus, who had become expert in a certain art … most wonderful of many, perished with it at sea, before anyone had learned it from him. Another, testifying that Glaucus had the highest skill in music, speaks of four bronze discs made by him to produce, when struck, a melodious harmony of notes; and that the proverb was said from this.

Another says that among the offerings of Alyattes there was dedicated a wonderful mixing bowl and stand, the work of Glaucus of Chios. Another, that Glaucus himself dedicated a bronze tripod at Delphi, made in such a way that, when … struck, the feet on which it stood, the part placed above it, the rim on the cauldron, and the rods set through the middle gave out the sound of a lyre. And again another, that the proverb was said from a certain Glaucus who seemed to have made something more.

You see how the difficulty of the proverb is shown by this as well, since those who wished to explain this proverb did not even keep to the same interpretation. So hard to discover does the matter of a proverb seem to be even among those outside. That is why one of their wise men, collecting the proverbs spoken by many and in different ways, wrote six books on them, two of proverbs in verse and four of proverbs in prose.

Those outside named these ‘proverbs,’ for no other reason, as it seems to me, than that they read the Proverbs of the most wise Solomon and knew from them that nothing of what is said in them can be learned clearly from the surface, and, wishing themselves to imitate the prophetic writing, wrote in the same way as he did. Then, since they could think of no name more proper than that, they named these too ‘proverbs.’”

With such citations Marcellus tries to teach the church of God how to understand the inspired Scriptures. I have set out this whole long and garrulous verbiage because I wanted to show the folly of the great and untimely ambition the man shows, displaying Greek learning and forgetting the divine words.

For he would never have fallen into such nonsense if he had remembered the apostolic commands, by which Paul urges that we must speak “the things freely given us by God,” “not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual,”

nor did he understand how it was said: “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Ignorant of this, he supposed that the wise men of the Greeks had knowledge of the wisdom given by God to Solomon, and, knowing it, imitated the prophetic writing, as he puts it.

And how could natural men, who do not know how to compare “spiritual things with spiritual,” know divine things and imitate them, when the divine apostle declared that “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God”? And when the same apostle said that the natural man cannot know spiritual things, “because they are spiritually discerned,” the noble fellow, taking the opposite view to the apostle, says that the makers of the Greek proverbs wrote in the same way as Solomon.

He says, word for word: “Since they read the Proverbs of the most wise Solomon and knew from them that nothing of what is said in them can be learned clearly from the surface, and, wishing themselves to imitate the prophetic writing, they wrote in the same way as he did.” But consider in another way, from his very citations, how far he has missed the truth in saying that the Greek writers wrote in the same way as Solomon.

For Solomon, moved by God-given wisdom, devoted his whole writing to the teaching of godliness for the benefit and salvation of souls, and, to exercise the minds of his readers, he used dark problems and turns of speech and sayings put forward in riddles. He testifies to this at the beginning of the book, saying: “For when the wise man hears these things he will be wiser, and the man of understanding will gain guidance, and will understand a parable and dark words, the sayings of the wise and riddles,”

and again, “to receive the turns of words.” That this is so is easy to learn from what is in the book, since these things cannot be understood otherwise than by our passing from the surface wording to the sense seen in it: for example, “The leech had three daughters, dearly loved, and these three did not satisfy her, and the fourth was not content to say ‘Enough,’”

and “Wisdom has built herself a house and set up seven pillars; she has slaughtered her sacrifices, she has mixed her wine in a bowl,” and as many other things like these, which cannot be understood otherwise, neither on the surface nor from some history, except by metaphor alone and a turning of the wording. But the Greek proverbs that were set out took their origins from certain histories.

For this one, he says, was said because of such and such a story, and that one again because of another deed of such a kind; and ENOUGH OF THE OAK likewise, because those who once ate acorns stopped eating such food. And if a certain Glaucus, who was expert in some art, was remembered in different ways by later writers who disagreed in their account of him, what has this to do with the inspired Proverbs? For these, unlike the Greek proverbs, do not receive their solution from some story. Ignorantly, then, and without experience in the study of the divine Scriptures, and not only that but contrary to the apostle, Marcellus declared that the wise men of the Greeks read the Proverbs of Solomon, learned and imitated the prophetic writing, and wrote in the same way as he did.

Now that we have said this to show that the man did not even read the divine Scriptures in the way he should, the time has come to examine also the unsound opinion of his faith, and how, holding views contrary to the church's teaching, he slandered both that teaching and those who preside over it.

I shall first set down the passages in which he tries to contradict what was written rightly and in accordance with the church, slandering those who wrote it, and all but taking up a fight against everyone. At one moment he makes his rebuttal against Asterius, at another against the great Eusebius.

And then he turns against the man of God, the truly thrice-blessed Paulinus, a man honoured with the presbyterate of the church of Antioch, who was bishop of the church of Tyre with distinction, and shone so brightly in that office that the church of Antioch claimed him as its own good.

But this man too, who lived blessedly and went to his rest blessedly, who fell asleep long ago and was troubling him not at all, this admirable writer mocks. And passing from him he wars on Origen, who had also departed this life long ago. Then he marches against Narcissus, and pursues the other Eusebius, and at the same time rejects all the church's fathers, being pleased with no one at all except himself alone.

He writes, then, mentioning them all by name with abuse, in this way: “I shall begin, then, from the letter written by him, to speak against each thing not written rightly. He has written that he believes in the Father, God Almighty, and in his Son, the only-begotten God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit; and he says that he has learned this manner of godliness from the divine Scriptures.

And when he says this I heartily accept what is said, for this manner of godliness is common to all of us, to believe in Father and Son and Holy Spirit. But when, not aiming at the divine power, he speaks to us in too human a way, through some technical theory, of the Father as Father and the Son as Son, it is no longer safe to praise such a theory.

For it is through such a theory that the heresy now devised by them happens to grow, which I think it is easy to show clearly from his own words. For he said that one must think the Father to be truly Father, and the Son truly Son, and the Holy Spirit likewise.”

This is what Marcellus says against Asterius, displeased that one must confess the Father to be truly Father, and the Son truly Son, and the Holy Spirit likewise. Hence he next tries at greater length to overturn the argument about these things. For he wants to confess that Christ is a mere word, like a human word, but not a Son truly living and subsisting.

And since he said that this heresy is being devised now, it must be shown that, as he goes on, he mentions Origen, who lived long ago, as holding the same opinion as those he is now slandering. But I have read very many church writings of men older even than Origen, and various letters of bishops and synods written long ago, through which one and the same character of the faith is shown.

So he was wrong to slander them by saying that this heresy is being devised now by those he slanders. After this, going on a little, he abuses not only Asterius but also the great Eusebius, whose episcopate very many famous provinces and cities have claimed, in this way: “I shall remind you of what he himself wrote in support of what was badly written by Eusebius, so that you may know that he clearly departs from his earlier promise.

For he wrote in these very words: ‘For the main point of the letter was to refer the Son's generation to the Father's will, and not to declare God's begetting an experience; which is what the wisest of the fathers declared in their own writings, guarding against the impiety of the heretics, who falsely ascribed to God a bodily and passible begetting of children, teaching emanations.’”

Against these words too he makes a long rebuttal next, after which he adds, saying: “So Asterius, wishing to support Eusebius, who wrote badly, by mentioning the nature of the Father and the nature of the begotten, became his own accuser. For it would have been far better to leave unexamined the depth of Eusebius's thought, lying, as he himself wrote, in brevity, than to use such a theory and bring the craftiness of the letter to light.”

And after other things he adds: “Now let us examine one saying from what Asterius wrote. For he said: ‘For the Father, who begot from himself the only-begotten Word and firstborn of all creation, is another.’ Joining both together, he wrote ‘only-begotten’ and ‘firstborn,’ though there is great opposition between these names, as even the very slow of learning can easily see.

For it is clear that the only-begotten, if he is truly only-begotten, can no longer be firstborn, and the firstborn, as firstborn, cannot be only-begotten.” Here too he accuses Asterius in vain. For the words that call the Son of God at one time only-begotten Son and at another firstborn of all creation were not Asterius's but divine Scripture's.

Again he adds to this, saying: “But leaving true knowledge aside, he has now too displayed to us his technical theory. For, unable to establish his own intention from the divine Scriptures, he runs back to the wisest fathers, as he thinks, saying: ‘which is what the wisest of the fathers declared in their own writings.’

Asterius says that his fathers made a declaration and wrote a dogma about God from their own choice. For the name ‘dogma’ belongs to human will and opinion.

That this is so, the dogmatic art of physicians bears us sufficient witness, and so do the so-called ‘dogmas’ of the philosophers; and that the decisions of the senate are still now called ‘dogmas’ of the senate, I think no one is unaware.” Marcellus was led to say this, forgetting the apostle's word which says of the Saviour, “having abolished the law of commandments in dogmas”; and he even finds fault with the need to follow the fathers, though divine Scripture says: “Ask your father, and he will tell you,

your elders, and they will tell you,” and “Do not remove the eternal boundaries which your fathers set.” Then, vexed that Asterius called Paulinus blessed, and at the same time again mentioning Eusebius with abuse, he writes thus: “For, wishing to support Eusebius, who wrote the letter badly, he first said that he composed the letter without unfolding the dogma in the manner of a teacher, for the letter was written not to the church nor to those who did not know, but to the blessed Paulinus; calling him blessed for this reason, that he held the same opinion as Asterius. Since, then, we have learned who are the wisest fathers of Asterius, I think it follows to name also the one who became the teacher of Paulinus and the others.

For from the letter of Paulinus the man who was his teacher too would become plain to us.” And after saying some things in between, he slanders the same man again as having wrongly accepted Origen, saying this: “Paulinus wrote this not reminding us of the gospel teaching, but admitting that some were moved this way of themselves, and others had been led in this way by the readings of the men mentioned before.

Then finally, adding as a kind of crowning touch to his proof, he appended to his letter some sayings of Origen, as if Origen could persuade more than the evangelists and the apostles. These are the sayings: ‘It is time, taking up again the subject of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, to go through a few of the things omitted then. Concerning the Father: that being indivisible and without parts he becomes Father of the Son, not by putting him forth, as some think.

For if the Son is a putting-forth of the Father and an offspring from him, like the offspring of living creatures, the one who puts forth and the one put forth must be bodies.’

Then, after setting out Origen's words, he adds: “Origen wrote this not wishing to learn about the eternity of the Word from the holy prophets and apostles, but, allowing himself more, he rashly ventures to describe a second hypostasis of the Word.” Against these words too, rightly spoken by Origen, that one must not suppose the begetting of the Son's divinity to be bodily and passible, he speaks, chiefly because Origen gave the Son a hypostasis. And he goes on again abusing Origen and contradicting what he wrote rightly, in these words: “That in writing such things Origen was using his own dogmas is clear from the fact that he often overturns his own views. At any rate, it follows to recall what he says about God in another place. He writes thus:

‘For God did not begin to be Father, being hindered, like men who become fathers, by not yet being able to be fathers. For if God is always perfect, and the power to be Father is present to him, and it is good for him to be Father of such a Son, why does he delay and deprive himself of the good, and, so to speak, not become Father from when he is able to be Father? The same must be said also of the Holy Spirit.’

How then, when Origen wrote this too, did Paulinus, blessed in his view, think it not without danger to hide this, but to use contrary statements to establish his own opinions, of which I would say not even Origen himself could give an account?” Here Marcellus falsely accused Origen of contradicting himself, being unable to understand that by the first citation he showed that the Father is incorporeal and impassible, and by the second that he begot the Son not in time but before all ages.

Again, after other things, the same man writes this about Origen: “And yet, if one must speak the truth about Origen, it is fitting to say this: that having just left philosophical studies and chosen to give himself to the divine words, before an exact understanding of the Scriptures, because of the greatness and ambition of his outside education he began writing sooner than he should and was led astray by the doctrines of philosophy, and because of them wrote some things not well. This is clear; for, still remembering the dogmas of Plato,

and the difference of the first principles in him, he wrote a book ON FIRST PRINCIPLES and gave his treatise this title. The greatest proof of this is that he took the beginning of his words, or the title of the book, from nowhere else than from the words spoken by Plato. For he wrote at the beginning thus:

‘Those who have believed and been persuaded’; you would find this saying, put this way, in Plato's Gorgias.” Even if it were found there, it would bring no reproach on Origen for saying “those who have believed and been persuaded” and adding next that grace and truth came “through Jesus Christ” and that Christ is the truth, according to his own saying, “I am the truth.” What fellowship could Plato ever have with these things?

No book of Plato's ON FIRST PRINCIPLES is recorded, nor did Origen think about first principles as Plato did, for he knew only one first principle, unbegotten, without beginning and beyond all things, and that this is the Father of one only-begotten Son, through whom all things came into being.

Having lied about Origen here too, after other things he adds: “For when Asterius said that the Word was begotten before the ages, the very text convicts him of lying, so that he misses not only the matter but the wording. For if Proverbs says ‘Before the age he founded me,’ how did he say that he was begotten before the ages? For it is one thing to be founded before the age, and another to be begotten before the ages.”

Having said this, and added other things to overturn the Son's being begotten before the ages, he adds in these very words: “I ask those of the saints who read this, having truly received, as it were, seeds and beginnings of this explanation, to add more proofs to what has been said, so that the intentions of those who pervert the faith may be convicted still more. For truly ‘they have forsaken God who begot them, and dug for themselves broken cisterns.’”

After such abuse here too, he next tries to show that the Son is not even the image of God, saying thus: “I think it follows to say a little also about the image. For he wrote: ‘Another is he who was begotten from him, “who is the image of the invisible God.”’ Asterius mentions the image of the invisible God for this reason, to teach that God differs from the Word as much as a man is thought to differ from his own image.

And after saying some things in between he adds: “It is therefore plain that before the taking up of our body the Word by himself was not the image of the invisible God. For an image ought to be seen, so that through the image what was until then not seen can be seen.” And he adds: “How then did Asterius write that the Word of God is the image of the invisible God? For images show the things whose images they are even when absent, so that the absent one seems to appear through them.

But if, God being invisible, it follows that the Word too is invisible, how can the Word by himself be the image of the invisible God, being himself invisible?” And going on he abuses again, saying thus: “How then do those ‘full of deceit and villainy,’ to speak as the apostle does, transfer the saying to his first creation, as they think, when David clearly spoke of his birth according to the flesh?”

And having stretched out a long discussion between these, he adds: “What then will he say to this? For I do not think he has anything to say about it. Nor do I think he would openly and without disguise confess even to others what he hides in his own mind, as one can clearly learn from what he has written. For, he says, ‘Another is the Father, who begot from himself the only-begotten Word and firstborn of all creation, alone from alone, perfect from perfect, king from king, lord from lord, God from God, the exact image of substance and will and glory and power.’ These sayings clearly convict his bad opinion of the Godhead.

For how can the Lord who was begotten, and God, as he said before, be the image of God? For an image of God is one thing, and God another. So if he is an image, he is not Lord nor God, but an image of the Lord and God; and if he is truly Lord and God, the Lord and God can no longer be an image of the Lord and God.”

He said this very blindly, not considering that a son too can sometimes be called a living image of his own father, when he is very like his father. Scripture teaches this, at any rate, when it says: “Adam lived two hundred and thirty years, and begot according to his form and according to his image; and he named him Seth.”

And about the Godhead of the Son the apostle teaches, saying: “who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself,” and again: “who, being the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of his hypostasis.” And elsewhere it is said: “For she is a radiance of eternal light, and a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness.”

And again the apostle, when he says, “having put off the old man and put on the new, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created him,” clearly teaches that the image of God is not said to be the flesh.

Passing on again to the bishops, Marcellus writes thus: “For see, what grieves us is not so much the case of Asterius, if he was led to write such things, but that some of those who seem to preside over the church, forgetting the apostolic tradition and preferring things outside the divine words, have dared to write and teach things which hold no less to the error of those mentioned before.

And after other things he adds: “For having read a letter of Narcissus, who presides over Neronias, which he wrote to a certain Chrestus and Euphronius and Eusebius, saying that the bishop Ossius had asked him whether he too, as Eusebius of Palestine says there are two substances, said the same, I learned from what he wrote that he answered that he believed there are three substances.” Having said this, he passes from Narcissus to Eusebius, accusing him of confessing that the Word of God is God.

He writes about him too as follows: “For having dared to divide the Word of God and to name the Word another God, separated from the Father in substance and power, into how great a blasphemy he has fallen one can easily and clearly learn from the very sayings he wrote.

For he wrote in these very words: ‘Surely the image and that of which it is the image are not conceived as one and the same, but as two substances and two things and two powers, as also so many names.’” And, as if slandering well, he adds this, saying: “How then have these not turned to the same worst road as those outside and set out to teach and write the same things, Eusebius having spoken like Valentinus and Hermes, and Narcissus like Marcion and Plato?”

Then next he strings together a long and garrulous endless talk, saying he had learned by hearsay that Eusebius had conversed with someone who was once in Laodicea; and he writes, as one learning from hearsay, about things he did not know, and adds, saying: “He ought instead to cry to the Lord with tears and mourning, ‘We have sinned, we have acted impiously, we have done lawlessly,’ and ‘we have done evil before you,’ and now, having repented, we ask to obtain your kindness.

This would have suited him; this it would have profited him to say, because of God's boundless goodness and kindness. And yet it would follow that God, who cares for us with kindness and justice, should answer, saying: ‘If an enemy had reproached me, I would have borne it; and if he who hates me had boasted against me, I would have hidden from him. But you, a man of like soul, my guide and my acquaintance, who together with me made sweet the food, we walked in the house of God in harmony.’”

For that he is with us his ministers we know from his own saying: ‘Behold, I will be with you,’ he said, ‘all the days’ of your life, ‘until the end of the age.’ Then, following on, he would surely have added the sayings that follow the earlier ones: ‘Let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into Hades; for wickedness is in their hearts.’ For Scripture says that those who are in the ignorance of impiety are swallowed by Hades as dead; for they were dead, even though they seemed to live.”

And again, next to this, he accuses Eusebius of having preached in the church while passing through Ancyra at that time, things which he says he learned by hearsay. Vexed at these, he writes as follows: “But the apostle writes such things about the faith of the Galatians; and Eusebius, transferring the apostle's meaning, for which the apostle, for the reason given above, said, ‘My children, for whom I am again in labour until Christ is formed in you,’ attacked the Galatians as not having a right opinion about God.

For he truly suffered a sharp and bitter labour, because he knew that the Galatians did not think about godliness as he did, nor speak of two substances and things and powers and gods.” Note how he bitterly reviles a man who said nothing more, as he himself writes, than the apostle's saying. And now he admits that Eusebius speaks of two gods, inasmuch as he confesses the Son of God as God together with the Father; but going on in what follows, as if he had forgotten what he accused him of here, he tries to slander the same man as saying that Christ is a mere man.

Next to this he adds a great deal of long nonsense, stringing together things that are and are not for himself, almost like those who said, “Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?”

By this it is shown, as I said at the beginning of this treatise, that he attacked the writing out of excessive enmity and hatred of his brothers. Passing from this he again makes a tragedy of Asterius, stretching out a long narrative about him, how he travels abroad, and where and when and to whom. And leaving this, he turns again to the man of God Paulinus, writing this in these words:

“Persuaded by these sayings, his father Paulinus too 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 once said to us too, while passing through Ancyra, that Christ is a creature.”

And again, telling tales, he says he conversed with Paulinus. Then he slanders the blessed man as having spoken of many gods, and, leaving Paulinus, he again occupies himself with Eusebius, saying: “So too Eusebius of Caesarea has written, he too holding the same opinion about gods as Paulinus and those outside.

For he wrote, not as though God were alone, but as though there were one, the only true God. From this, then, Paulinus, the father of Asterius, learned and thought that there are younger gods.” Here too he accuses them as introducing opinions of gods, while he himself denies the Godhead of the Son. And having set out Eusebius's wording, he does not understand that the word teaching that the Father alone is true God was not his,

but our Saviour's, who said: “that they may know you, the only true God.” And after other things he adds, saying: “For from what divine sayings will they be able to show us that there is one unbegotten and one begotten in the way they have believed him to have been begotten, when neither prophets nor evangelists nor apostles said this?”

Then, as if he had entered himself in the games to box against everyone at once, he passes to Narcissus and says: “So that even if someone says this, establishing that there is a first God and a second, as Narcissus wrote in these very words

(for he who says ‘Let us make man according to our image and likeness’ does not allow it), that he and his Father are two, we have heard in part from the testimony of the Lord himself and of the holy Scriptures. If, then, Narcissus wishes for this reason to separate the Word from the Father in power, let him know that the prophet who wrote that God said, ‘Let us make man according to our image and likeness,’ himself wrote, ‘And God made man.’”

And passing from Narcissus to Asterius he writes this: “For Asterius declared that the Father and the Son are one and the same only in this respect, that they agree in all things. For he said thus: ‘And because of the exact agreement in all words and deeds, “I and the Father are one.”’” And again he attacks Eusebius, saying: “For they want the Saviour to be a man; this is clear from how craftily Eusebius has turned the apostle's sayings to his own intention.

For as if wishing to give birth from some old labour to a very great blasphemy, he ‘poured out from his own treasure,’ according to the Saviour's saying, ‘the evil.’

For, wishing to show that the Saviour is only a man, as if revealing to us a very great secret mystery of the apostle, he said this: ‘Therefore the divine apostle too, handing on to us the secret and mystical theology, most clearly cries and shouts, “One God,” then after the one God he says, “one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”’

If, then, he says he is a man, attending only to his dispensation according to the flesh, he surely also agrees that one must not have hope in him. For ‘Cursed is the man,’ said the prophet Jeremiah, ‘who has his hope in man.’”

You see how malice is blind. At that time, at any rate, he himself testified that Eusebius confesses the Son as God, and blamed him for this, for introducing the Word of God as God subsisting in substance and power; now he slanders the same man as saying that Christ is a mere man, lying openly both in what he has said and in what he next adds about him, saying: “But the man mentioned before, having cared little for the holy prophets, as if sounding out some secret and hidden theology of the apostle, said: ‘One God, one mediator also of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.’

And the man who wrote this, and boasts greatly of remembering the Scriptures, did not notice that the most holy apostle who wrote this also wrote that: ‘who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man, and found in fashion as a man.’

You see how the holy apostle (as if foreseeing their wickedness in the Spirit) wrote thus in another place “as a man” and “being made in the likeness of man,” to stop their great blasphemy.” And after other things he slanders the same man in this way: “How then does Eusebius, not attending to these things, want the Saviour to be only a man?

Not daring to say this openly, but wishing it, he is convicted by his own words.” And the man who said this used to blame the same Eusebius for proclaiming the Son God, writing thus: “For having dared to divide the Word of God, and having named the Word another God, separated from the Father in substance and power, into how great a blasphemy he has fallen.”

Having set out so much, and much more than this, not only against the bishops but also against the sound faith of the church, Marcellus would make plain what sort of disposition he had. And that he cared nothing for the truth you would learn by reading the letters of the bishops themselves, in which you will find him mutilating the whole body of the sense of the words and hiding the whole sequence, but seizing on little phrases and making his slander from them maliciously.

At once, for example, he slanders Eusebius openly as having said Christ was a mere man, because in his letter he made a citation of the apostle's words, in which the apostle himself said: “For God is one, and there is one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

This saying of the apostle, then, the most wise man attacked as if it were Eusebius's, not understanding that he was attacking the apostle; but Eusebius's own words in the same letter, and those in his other writings composed on the divine Scriptures, which are spread abroad everywhere, he passed over in silence, hiding by silence what could not be slandered.

One would find him doing the same with the rest of the writings he attacked. Sparing proportion in our discourse, we leave these to those who wish to examine them exactly, while we hasten now to uncover Marcellus's own strange talk about the Son of God, so that it may become plain to all what he thought about the Son of God.

The faith of the Galatian, or rather his unbelief toward the Son of God, the time now calls us to bring to light, after setting out what he slandered; and, stripping away a little of the pretext of his letter, to lay bare the wrong opinion that has long lurked in the man; and to show all, by the testimony of his own words, what sort of man led the church of Christ: one who held that the Son neither is nor pre-exists nor ever at all existed for God before he was born through the Virgin, and said that he was only a Word, of one nature with God, eternally with him and united to him, such as the word in a man would be.

For he himself uses this example, saying that there is a Word within God himself, at one time at rest, at another active in signifying, and going forth from the Father by activity alone, as we too, when we command something, would act by saying and speaking something. That no one would call the signifying and active word a son in this way is clear to everyone. But he, granting this of God, says, I do not know how, that the Word who does not subsist took on flesh and acted in it,

and that then he became Christ and Jesus and king and image of God and beloved and glorified Son, and indeed firstborn of all creation, not having been so before, that he became so then, although he did not subsist. And the strangest part of the argument: that all these things began not even four hundred whole years ago, and will cease again all at once after the time of the judgment, the Word being united to God so as to be nothing other than God, and the flesh which he assumed being left deserted by the Word, so that then neither the Son of God will subsist, nor the Son of Man whom he assumed.

And he ends up at this point as if he were deaf, not hearing the angel Gabriel, who announced the good news to the God-bearer plainly and expressly about the one to be born from her and to come forth “from the seed of David according to the flesh,” saying: “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end”; nor understanding the words of the great prophet Daniel, who sets his seal on these very things in what he foretold in the divine Spirit, saying: “And behold, one like a son of man was coming with the clouds of heaven, and he came to the Ancient of Days, and was brought before him.

And to him was given the dominion and the honour and the kingdom, and all peoples, tribes, tongues will serve him; his authority is an eternal authority which will not pass away, and his kingdom will not be destroyed.” Nor did Isaiah persuade him, who himself prophesied thus about the unending kingdom of the Son of Man: “For a child has been born to us, a son also has been given to us,

whose dominion is upon his shoulder, and his name is called Angel of great counsel, Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Potentate, Prince of peace, Father of the age to come. For I will bring peace and health to him.

Great is his dominion, and of his peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to set it right and to uphold it in judgment and in righteousness, from now and for ever.”

In agreement with these was what Gabriel announced to the Virgin, saying that the one born from her would reign “for ever” and that “of his kingdom” there would be no end. How Marcellus dared to write the opposite of all these, you may learn from his own words, by which he denied at once the divinity and the humanity of the Son of God, in a newer way than any godless heresy.

For of the heterodox, some, saying that the Son of God did not pre-exist or exist before, supposed him to be a man like the rest, born of a man, and said he was honoured with adoption; but granting this, they confessed for him an immortal and unending honour and glory and an eternal kingdom. Others, denying the man, supposed that the Son of God was God pre-existing. But those strangers to the church went only so far in error. This man, who led the church of God for so many years, abolishes the existence of the Son of God; and having ministered at his altar, he believes, perhaps, that he himself will obtain eternal and immortal life, but deprives the high priest of it.

But we have, according to the apostle, “a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,” whom he dares to say neither pre-existed nor pre-subsisted, nor will exist hereafter or be with the saints of God at the very fulfilment of the promise of the kingdom of heaven. For then, when all the saints share in the kingdom of God in incorruptible and immortal bodies, he deprives Christ alone, and the flesh which he assumed, of it.

And he does not shudder to declare that the author of the resurrection, the cause of eternal life for all, will fall not only from the kingdom but even from life itself: as if someone were to grant eyes but abolish the light that supplies their shining. And neither the great angel of God Gabriel, nor the great prophet Daniel, of whom it was said, “Are you wiser than Daniel?”, nor the great Isaiah, nor the rest of the choir of prophets persuaded the man not to write or think such things,

nor even the Jews, among whom the Christ still expected now, whom they are accustomed to call the Anointed, is hoped to have an ageless and immortal kingdom. But he has become worse even than these, who dared to commit impiety against both the beginning and the end of the Son of God; whom not even the divine apostle shamed out of such impiety, when he says outright: “The saying is faithful: for if we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him”; and that we shall be heirs of God, yet not without Christ, for he says, “heirs

of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” And again he says: “But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more; death will no longer have dominion over him,”

and again: “But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So eternal life will be procured for us in no other way than “in Christ Jesus our Lord”; and our hope is not simply to live, but to be glorified with him and to inherit with him and to reign with him; for all things will be ours from fellowship with him.

The same apostle teaches this when he says: “God is faithful, through whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” And what the fellowship is he shows, saying: “and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

The same apostle taught this also about the Saviour, saying: “But he, because he remains for ever, holds his priesthood permanently; hence he is able to save completely those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”

Moreover he said that Melchizedek remains a priest “for ever” because he is made like “the Son of God.” But that Marcellus dared to write the opposite of all these will be set out a little later; now let us first see how he thought that the Son of God did not exist or subsist at all in the beginning.

Having attacked those who said that the Son of God is truly Son, living and subsisting, he makes his own opinion plain, writing in these very syllables: “Therefore, before coming down and being born through the Virgin, he was only Word. For what else was it, before taking human flesh, that came down ‘in the last days,’ as he too has written, and was born from the Virgin? It was nothing else than Word.”

Then, going on, he calls him eternal, thereby defining him as unbegotten. He writes thus: “Do you hear, then, the agreement of the Holy Spirit, testifying through many different persons to the eternity of the Word?

And for this reason he begins from the eternity of the Word, saying: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ Using three successive testimonies, he wants to show the eternity of the Word.” And after other things he adds: “For before, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word.”

And he adds that he was not even “the image of the invisible God,” saying: “It is therefore plain that before the taking up of our body the Word by himself was not the image of the invisible God.” And again after other things he adds: “What, then, was this that came down before becoming man? Surely, he says, spirit. For if he wished to say anything besides this, the angel who said to the Virgin, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you,’ will not allow him. And if he says it is spirit, hear the Saviour saying, ‘God is spirit.’”

Since the Saviour clearly said this about the Father, “God is spirit,” Marcellus is convicted of saying that the Father himself became man. But he is even more ambitious, writing thus: “And let him learn, then, that the Word of God has come, not a Word called so loosely, as they say, but being a true Word.”

And again he adds this to what was said: “For if the examination were of the spirit alone, he would rightly appear to be one and the same with God; but if the addition according to the flesh in the Saviour were examined, the Godhead seems to be expanded by activity alone; so that it is rightly truly an indivisible monad.”

And he establishes this still more by what he writes next: “To say, then, that he was begotten before the ages seems to have been said consistently; for what goes forth becomes the offspring of the father who sent it forth. But the other point he has taken up neither soundly nor piously.

For to say that the one who went forth from him is not Word, and that this is not the true manner of the generation, but simply only Son, usually gives the hearers an impression of a human sight.” In this he has denied the Son bareheaded, and is clearly introducing a mere word, like a word commanding what is to be done, from what he adds, saying: “whom all the divine Scriptures proclaim in this way.

For David says of him: ‘By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm.’ And again the same: ‘He sent forth his word and healed them.’ And Solomon: ‘The wicked will seek me and will not find me; for they hated wisdom, and did not choose the word of the Lord.’ And Isaiah said: ‘For out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’

And again Jeremiah says: ‘The wise were put to shame and terrified and caught, because they rejected the word of the Lord.’ And Hosea the prophet said: ‘They hated the one who reproves in the gates, and abhorred a holy word.’ And Micah likewise, he too mentioning the word, said: ‘Out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’

Collecting so many sayings about the commanding word, Marcellus says that the God Word who was “in the beginning with God” is something of this kind too. Therefore he adds, saying: “But the holy apostle and disciple of the Lord John, teaching clearly and expressly at the beginning of the gospel, as though he had been unknown among men before, names him Word of the Almighty. He said thus: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ Using not one testimony, he signifies the eternity of the Word.

And he adds to this, saying next: “So that, in saying ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ he might show that the Word is in the Father in power (for God is the beginning of all things that have come into being, ‘from whom are all things’), and in ‘and the Word was with God,’ that the Word is with God in activity (for ‘all things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being’),

and in saying that the Word is God, that he might not divide the Godhead, since the Word is in him and he in the Word; for he says, ‘The Father is in me, and I in the Father.’” And he adds still more to this, laying bare his own mind in what he adds next, saying: “The holy apostle and disciple of the Lord John, then, mentioning his eternity, became a true witness of the Word, saying: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’

Mentioning nothing here of a generation of the Word, but using three successive testimonies, he confirmed that the Word was in the beginning.” And he adds to this, saying: “We know that the dispensation according to the flesh belongs to the man, but we have believed that the eternity according to the spirit is united to the Father.”

Going on next to this he adds: “If, then, he himself says, ‘I came forth from the Father and have come,’ and again, ‘And the word which you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me,’ and ‘All that the Father has is mine,’ it is clear that he rightly said that too, ‘The Father is in me and I in the Father,’ so that the Word who says this is in God, and the Father in the Word, because the Word is the power of the Father.

For a trustworthy witness has called him ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God.’ So it is not because of the exact agreement in all words and deeds, as Asterius said, that the Saviour says ‘I and the Father are one,’ but because it is impossible either for the Word of God, or for God, to be separated from his own Word. For if Asterius thinks the Saviour said this because of agreement in all things, and does not want to learn the truth by attending to the second dispensation, it is necessary to remind him how at times one can see an apparent disagreement.

For so the sayings teach us. For what agreement was there at the time of the passion, when he said, ‘Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass,’ and added that too, ‘yet not as I will, but as you will’? For it was not the part of one in agreement first to say, ‘let this cup pass’; and what was added seems to hold nothing of agreement either, for he says, ‘let not my will but yours be done, Father.’

You hear how the letter shows an apparent disagreement, one willing and the other not willing. For that the Father willed is clear from the fact that what he willed came to pass; and that the Son did not will is clear from his asking to be excused. And again he says: ‘I do not seek my own will but the will of the Father who sent me.’

How then does he say that the Saviour said ‘I and the Father are one’ because of agreement in all things?” And after a little he adds: “How can the Son be in agreement with the Father, or the Father with the Son, when the Son says, ‘All that the Father has is mine’? For to say ‘All that the Father has is mine’ was plainly the part of a Son claiming more than the Father.

For this reason, passing over saying ‘All that the Father has is common,’ he said, ‘All that the Father has is mine.’ And yet it was not proper for one in agreement to speak so, but rather: All that the Father has is common. For if the Acts of the Apostles, praising the agreement of those who then came to the faith, said, ‘They had all things in common,’ and one must think that among men able to agree all things are common, how much more ought the Father and the Son to share fellowship, if they are divided into two hypostases? But now, in saying ‘All that the Father has is mine,’ the Son appears to claim more than the Father; and in saying that he is not even master of his own word, but that the Father is master of this too

(for ‘the word which you hear,’ he says, ‘is not mine but the Father's who sent me’), he shows the Father taking away what belongs to the child. Both, on Asterius's supposition, appear to be said inconsistently.

For one in agreement ought not to snatch away the rights that belong to the other, for that is grasping, but to think that what belongs to each is common. So when we look at the human flesh, we shall not find the Saviour saying ‘I and the Father are one’ in the way Asterius wrote; for it was not because of the exact agreement in all words and deeds, as he wrote, that the Saviour said ‘I and the Father are one.’

For if that were so, he would surely have said: I and the Father agree with each other in all things. But now he said, ‘I and the Father are one.’ So if there was some disagreement in those matters, and the Master must speak the truth, one must know exactly that the Saviour, when he says ‘I and the Father are one,’ says it then not looking to the man whom he assumed, but to the Word who came forth from the Father.

For if there seems to be some disagreement, it ought to be referred to the weakness of the flesh, which the Word assumed, not having had it before; and if unity is spoken of, this appears to belong to the Word.

Hence he rightly said not only ‘I and the Father are one,’ but that too: ‘Have I been with you so long, Philip, and you say, Show me the Father?’ Clearly not to these eyes, but to the spiritual eyes able to see spiritual things. For both the Father and his Word are invisible to the eyes of the flesh. So it was not because of agreement in all things that he said this to Philip.”

Having said so much, he takes up the argument again from the beginning and lays down his dogma in this way: “For before all creation there was a kind of quiet, as is likely, the Word being in God. For if Asterius has believed that God is maker of all things, it is clear that he too will agree with us that God always exists, never having received a beginning of being, and that the others came into being by him and came into being from nothing. For I do not think he believes this too, the man who says that some things are also unbegotten, but that he is fully persuaded that heaven and earth and all things in the heavens and on earth came into being by God.

If, then, he believes this, he must also agree that besides God there was nothing else. The Word, then, had his own glory, being in the Father.”

And having said this, after other things he adds: “Asterius names the authority given to him glory, and not only glory but glory before the world, not considering that when the world had not yet come into being there was nothing else but God alone.”

Having said this, and having openly denied the Son by it, Marcellus, in order to persuade us exactly what kind of thing he thought the Word of God to be, shows his meaning more clearly by likening him to our word, in what he writes: “For as all things that have come into being by the Father have come into being through the Word, so also the things spoken by the Father are signified through the Word. For this reason the most holy Moses names the Word an angel here, because he appeared for no other reason than to announce to Moses the things he knew to be profitable to the sons of Israel; and he knew it was profitable for them to believe that there is one God.

Therefore he also said to him, ‘I am he who is,’ to teach that there is no other God besides himself. This, I think, is easy for those who think well to know even from a small and humble example among us.

For no one can separate a man's word from him in power and hypostasis; for the word is one and the same with the man, and is separated from him by nothing else than the activity of the deed alone.” And he is still more lavish in displaying his meaning by what he says next: “For God did not need another preparation, such as matter or any other human one, for his fashioning, but this preparation in his own mind.

Since, then, it was impossible for God to think about the fashioning of heaven without a Word and the wisdom that belongs to the Word, he rightly said, ‘When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.’” And he adds again, likening the Word of God to the human word, to show him without hypostasis, and writes thus: “Here the Father says to Moses, ‘I am he who is,’ but he says it clearly through the Word.

For whatever the Father says, he is seen everywhere to say it through the Word. This is clear also from ourselves, so far as small things may be likened to great and divine ones; for we too do, so far as we can, all that we wish to say and do by our word.”

Then, after saying some things in between, he adds: “How then did Asterius, pretending to follow the holy Scriptures simply and with fear, not know this part, which says, ‘The Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on the earth below, and there is no other besides him,’ and that ‘he is one’ and besides him there ‘is no’ other?”

And going on again he insists, saying: “Not called Word loosely, even if those who teach otherwise burst with their lies, but being properly and truly Word.” And he adds: “For what else was the hidden mystery than the mystery concerning the Word? This mystery was formerly so hidden ‘in God’ that no one of the former people clearly knew the things concerning the Word, but we now enjoy the riches ‘of the glory’ and of the hidden mystery.”

And after this he again uses a human image, writing in this way: “For who, either of the holy angels or of just men, was so trustworthy as to undo the punishment decreed for man from the face of God,

except the Word himself, who was present and fashioning with him, to whom the Father said, ‘Let us make man according to our image and likeness,’ since there was no other God able to fashion with him? For ‘I am,’ he says, ‘the first God, and I after these things, and besides me there is no other God.’ So there was neither some younger God, nor any other God ‘after these things’ able to work with God.

But suppose someone, using a small and human example from among us, should examine the divine act as through an image: just as a skilled sculptor, wishing to mould a statue, first considers its outlines and features within himself, then thinks out how great a breadth and length is fitting, and examines the proportion of the whole in each part; and having prepared the suitable material of bronze, and having first shaped the future statue in his own mind, and thinking he sees it mentally, and conscious that the word works with him, by which he reasons and by which he is accustomed to do everything (for nothing done without word is good), beginning this perceptible work he urges himself as if another, saying: Come, let us make, come, let us mould a statue: so God, the Master of all, making the living statue from earth, urges no one else but his own Word, saying, ‘Let us make man,’ not in the same way as the others; for the whole creation came into being by word.

And after other things he adds to this: “But now I believe the divine Scriptures, that God is one, and that his Word came forth from the Father, so that ‘all things’ might come into being ‘through him’; but after the time of the judgment, and the setting right of all things, and the destruction of every opposing activity, ‘then he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him,’ ‘to God and the Father,’ so that thus the Word may be in God, as he was before the world existed. For since nothing existed before but God alone, and all things were going to come into being through the Word, the Word came forth by effective activity, this Word being the Father's.”

And again he puts the same meaning more plainly, saying: “For before the world existed the Word was in the Father. But when Almighty God purposed to make all things in the heavens and on earth, the coming into being of the world needed effective activity; and for this reason, since nothing else existed besides God (for all things are agreed to have come into being by him), then the Word came forth and became the maker of the world, he who before was also preparing it mentally within.”

And again after all this he adds, saying: “And for this reason he does not name himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself Son of Man, so that by such a confession he may prepare the man to become Son of God by adoption, through fellowship with him, and after the completion of the work may again, as Word, be united to God, fulfilling what the apostle said before: ‘Then he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all.’ For then he will be what he was before.” By so many words Marcellus openly forswore the Son of God.

For if God and the Word in him were one and the same, and no one could ever be his own father, as neither his own son, being one and alone, and God was one, alone, and the same as his own Word, it is clear that he was not Father, since there was no Son for him, nor was there a Son, since there was no Father subsisting for him.

What, then, the man set out about the Son of God neither being nor pre-subsisting, but being a mere word within God himself, sometimes at rest and sometimes active by effective power, we have learned from what has been set out. Setting out these same things often and in different ways in his writing, he heaped a great pile of superfluous words into his treatise. But we, content with his own refutations of himself from the words he set out, shall not even judge the absurdity of this Jewish dogma worthy of rebuttal.

From here let us pass to what the same man said about the flesh, which he says the Word in God assumed by activity alone, and let us see how he transfers to the flesh the theology about the only-begotten Son of God that is in the divine Scriptures, denying the Son of God himself who truly pre-existed, and making a theology of the flesh, which the irreverent man determined would shortly be deserted by the Word:

“For the Word ‘was in the beginning,’ being nothing other than Word. But the man united to the Word, not having been before, became man, as John teaches us, saying: ‘And the Word became flesh.’ For this reason, then, he appears to mention the Word alone; for whether divine Scripture mentions the name of Jesus or of Christ, it appears to name the Word of God together with the human flesh. And if anyone should undertake to show that before the new covenant the name of Christ or Jesus could be applied to the Word alone, he will find this said prophetically, as is clear from this too: for it says, ‘The kings of the earth stood by, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.’”

And after other things he adds: “Rightly, then, before the descent this was, as we have often said, Word; but after the descent and the taking up of the flesh he obtained different titles too, since ‘the Word became flesh.’” Note how by this Marcellus does not want the name of Jesus and Christ and the other titles to apply to the Word, but to the flesh which he assumed. The observation is necessary, so that when he again casts off the flesh he may be convicted of impiety against the Christ of God himself. After what was said before, going on next, he writes such things about the body of the Saviour:

“And let Asterius not think this unbelievable, if the body, being younger than he, was able to obtain such great antiquity. But let him consider that, even if human flesh is indeed younger, nevertheless the Word who deigned to take it through a pure virgin, uniting what is his own to it, not only made the man created in himself ‘firstborn of all creation,’ but also wills him to be the beginning of all things, not only of those on earth but also of those in heaven.”

Having said so much, after other things he refers to the flesh the apostle's words by which he speaks of the Son of God as God, saying: “who is the image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation; for in him were created all things in the heavens and on earth, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities; all things were created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and all things hold together in him”; he does not blush to take such words of the apostle as referring to the flesh. About which flesh Marcellus himself, going on, writes this: “If, then, the Saviour confesses that the flesh profits nothing, how is it possible that what is from the earth and profits nothing should be with the Word in the ages to come as though it were of use to him?”

And again about the same flesh he adds: “How could the form of the servant, which the Word assumed, being the form of a servant, still be with the Word?” But the man who said such things about the flesh now calls it “the image of God,” and “the firstborn of all creation,” and says that it is before all things, “and that all things in the heavens and on earth, thrones, dominions, principalities, authorities, were created in it.”

He writes thus: “Therefore, if he is ‘firstborn of all creation,’ and ‘in him all things were created,’ we must know that the apostle is now mentioning his dispensation according to the flesh.” And he confirms the argument, adding next: “He was named ‘firstborn of all creation,’ then, because of his birth according to the flesh, not because of the first creation, as they think.”

And he adds: “This most holy Word, then, was not named ‘firstborn of all creation’ before his becoming man (for how can he who always is be firstborn of anything?); but the first ‘new man,’ in whom God willed ‘to sum up all things,’ this one the divine Scriptures name ‘firstborn of all creation.’” And again he adds: “You hear how not only these things, but also the things that pre-existed ‘in the heavens and on earth,’ happen to have been ‘created in him’ according to the new creation.”

These, then, are the words by which he said that he was named firstborn of all creation because of the flesh. See now how he refers to the flesh also the saying “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” not attending to the divine Scripture, which speaks in Proverbs in the person of Wisdom in this way: “I, Wisdom, have made counsel my dwelling, and I have called knowledge and understanding; through me kings reign, and princes write righteousness.”

To which the same Wisdom adds next: “I walk in the ways of righteousness, and I move among the paths of justice, that I may give a portion to those who love me, and fill their treasuries with good things. If I tell you the things that happen day by day, I will remember to count the things from everlasting.

The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the age he founded me; in the beginning, before he made the earth,” and what follows. Not wishing to turn his mind to these words, but having only one aim, not to confess the Son of God, Marcellus refers the present theology to the flesh, and turning aside from the straight road he has devised a trackless way for himself, writing word for word thus:

“This chapter of Proverbs, then, said ‘The Lord created me’ not wishing to set forth the beginning of the Godhead of our Saviour, as they think, but the second dispensation according to the flesh; therefore it fittingly mentions the creation of the human flesh.”

And next he adds: “So the creation belongs to his human activity. Therefore he says, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works’: he created me, clearly, through the Virgin Mary, through whom God chose to unite the human flesh to his own Word.”

And after other things he adds, saying: “This being so, it follows to consider in the mind this chapter spoken in a proverb, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.’ For our Master God truly created, having made what was not; for the flesh which the Word assumed did not exist, but he created it when it did not exist.” And again he adds, saying: “So this is ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.’

And he adds, ‘Before the age he founded me,’ naming this foundation the dispensation according to the flesh which was predestined; as the apostle also says, ‘For no one can lay another foundation than the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.’ And here he mentions one age, from which he said the things of Christ had been founded.”

And again he confirms the same wording, saying: “Rightly the prophet said, ‘Before the age he founded me,’ clearly meaning what is according to the flesh, because of its fellowship with the Word, his true Son.” And he adds next: “Then he says, ‘in the beginning, before he made the earth.’ What earth is this but clearly our flesh, which after the disobedience became earth again? For he says, ‘Earth you are, and to earth you shall go.’ For this had to obtain healing, having in some way shared in the holy Word.”

But see how in this Marcellus trips over himself. Having said elsewhere that the flesh is the “beginning of the ways” of God that was created, and again having said that the same is the “foundation,” he adds “before he made the earth.” Then he interprets the earth again as the flesh, not seeing that it makes no sense to say that the flesh was created before the flesh, and after the creation of the flesh to name the flesh again.

But he adds still more to this next, saying: “Then he says, ‘before he made the depths.’ Here the prophet, speaking in a proverb, says that the depths are the hearts of the saints, which have in their own depth the gift of the Spirit.”

Notice here too how, having taken “The Lord created me” as said of the flesh, and then being hemmed in by the Scripture which says “before he made the depths,” he interprets the depths as the hearts of the saints, but does not see that the hearts of the saints, that is, of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, Moses and Elijah and Melchizedek and the rest of the prophets, came into being before the flesh of the Saviour.

How then can “before he made the depths” be referred to the flesh? And after other things he adds again, saying: “What then is this chapter too, ‘before the springs of the waters came forth’? He says they are the holy apostles. The Scripture of Exodus sets this mystery before us, foretelling long ago the types of the apostles; for since the apostles are twelve in number, it mentions twelve springs.”

And again he adds the same, writing thus: “Rightly, then, the Master said about the birth according to the flesh, through the prophet Solomon speaking, ‘before the springs of the waters came forth.’”

Then, going through some other things next, he adds: “Since, then, we have spoken of what comes before, it follows to fill in what remains. What remains is the part about the mountains and the hills. For ‘before the mountains were settled,’ he says, ‘and before all the hills he begets me.’ He calls the apostles and the successors of the apostles mountains and hills, so as to signify in a proverb their righteous way of life compared with other men.”

Having set out such interpretations, he passes again to the apostle's words, speaking the opposite of the apostle. For the apostle taught that the pre-existing Son of God is “firstborn of all creation,” that “all things were created through him and in him,” and testified with a great cry that he is “before all things”; but Marcellus casts this theology too down onto the flesh, a little later denying this too.

He speaks thus: “For this reason he rightly adds, ‘who is the image of the invisible God.’ When did he become the image, if not when he assumed the creature made ‘according to the image and likeness’? For before, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word.” And he persists, making the same plainer, in these words: “It is therefore plain that before the taking up of our body the Word by himself was not the image of the invisible God; for an image ought to be seen, so that through the image what was until then not seen can be seen.”

And again he adds, saying: “How then did Asterius write that the Word of God is the image of the invisible God? For images show the things whose images they are even when absent, so that the absent one seems to appear through them. But if, God being invisible, the Word too is invisible, how can the Word by himself be the image of the invisible God, being himself invisible? For it is impossible for what is not visible ever to appear through what is invisible.”

Here too Marcellus does not see that, if we were to grant that the flesh is the image of God, it would be time to say that the flesh of all men and the faces of their bodies are images of God, so that on his view the Saviour had nothing special. And he, as if forgetting what he wrote after this about the flesh (calling it “the form of a servant” from a citation of the apostle, and saying for that reason it cannot be with the Word, because it is “the form of a servant,”

and even saying bareheaded, “How is it possible that what is from the earth and profits nothing should be with the Word in the ages to come?”), insists that the flesh is for the present the image of the invisible God, affirming categorically that before the taking up of our body his Word was not the image of the invisible God.

And again after what was set out he adds, saying: “Therefore it is clear from every side that the flesh added to the Word was called by the holy apostle the image of the invisible God, so that through the visible the invisible too might appear. ‘He is,’ says the apostle, ‘the image of the invisible God’: now, clearly, when he assumed the flesh made according to the image of God, he became the true image of the invisible God.

For if through this image we have been counted worthy to know the Word of God, we ought to believe the Word himself saying through the image, ‘I and the Father are one.’ For no one can know either the Word or the Father of the Word apart from this image.”

And again he adds: “So too, at any rate, the apostle says, as we said a little before, ‘he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,’ signifying to us by the form of the servant the human flesh, which our Master God, forming it by his own wisdom, said, ‘Let us make man according to our image and likeness,’ rightly naming the human flesh image. For he knew exactly that it would shortly be the image of his own Word.”

After this he tries to establish that “From the womb before the morning star I begot you” was also said about the flesh. He writes thus: “For this reason, then, since the star that shows the day was rightly named morning star by the prophet David, it is no longer right to ask who this morning star is; for this was the star that appeared at that time, which brought and showed the day to the magi.

It is plain, then, that ‘before the morning star I begot you’ was said by the almighty Master about the Word born through the Virgin with the human flesh; and the gospel clearly signifies this too, that our Master was first born through the Virgin, and later the star appeared that showed the day.”

Going on from this he adds again: “For the man has received authority not only over things on earth, but also over those in heaven, and rightly; for if, when he both became ‘man’ and ‘mediator of God and men,’ then ‘all things were created for him,’ as the apostle said, ‘things in the heavens and things on earth,’ it follows to know exactly that authority has been given to him not only over things on earth but also over those in heaven.” And again after other things he adds: “For if the holy gospel speaks of some glory given to him by the Father, the man is seen to have received this through the Word. For having become, according to the holy apostle, ‘mediator of God and men,’ by the glory given him by the Father he glorified godly men.

And again he adds this: “And he deemed worthy the man who fell through disobedience to be joined to his own Word through the Virgin. For what other greater glory could there be among men than this glory? And having said, ‘I have glorified you,’ he adds, saying, ‘and I will glorify again,’ so that through his surpassing kindness, in the second glory after the resurrection of the flesh, he might make the formerly mortal man immortal and glorify him with such great glory that he would not only be freed from his former slavery but also counted worthy of the glory above man.”

And again he adds: “So that, as I said, he might prepare the man who was formerly deceived by the devil himself to conquer the devil in turn. For this reason he assumed the man, so that he might prepare him in due course to receive the first-fruits of the authority.” And he adds still, saying: “For this is the beloved, the man united to the Word, about whom the evangelist said, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’”

And again he adds: “that the Word of the invisible God was going to be born through a virgin and to assume the human flesh, and that through it, having fought down the devil who formerly prevailed over man, he might prepare him to become not only incorruptible and immortal, but also enthroned with God in heaven.”

All these things must be kept in memory because of what Marcellus himself will put forward against the flesh which the Word of God assumed. For, as if forgetting all that he set out, he brings an end neither happy nor pious on the saving body. Besides all this, as though his earlier points had succeeded, he tries to show that “The Lord has reigned, let the earth rejoice” also refers to the flesh.

He speaks thus: “He who came down and took the flesh through the Virgin was appointed king over the church, clearly so that through the Word the man who had formerly fallen from the kingdom of heaven might be able to obtain a kingdom. God, wishing this man, who formerly fell from the kingdom through disobedience, to become Lord and God, worked this dispensation. So the most holy prophet David says prophetically, ‘The Lord has reigned, let the earth rejoice.’”

And after other things he adds: “For which reason, as though our Master Christ received the beginning of his kingdom from some time, the prophecy says, ‘But I was appointed king by him.’” And again he adds: “For this reason he will reign, having come in the human flesh, and the man formerly deceived, being appointed king through the Word, ‘will abolish every rule’ of the devil ‘and power and authority.’”

Having said so much about the Saviour's flesh, and much more still, and having said that it is the image “of the invisible God,” and the firstborn “of all creation,” and the king, and Jesus, and Christ, and the beloved, and whatever else he listed, and having declared that the Word was called all these because of it, it is time now to see what end he puts upon it.

“For this reason he will reign, having come in the human flesh, and the man formerly deceived, being appointed king through the Word, ‘will abolish every rule’ of the devil ‘and power and authority.’ ‘For he must reign,’ he says, ‘until he puts his enemies under his feet.’ This, then, the holy apostle says, is the end of the kingdom of our Master Christ: that all things are subjected under his feet.” And after a little he adds: “Here the apostle reveals to us a very great mystery, saying that there will be an end of Christ's kingdom; and the end will be then, when all things are subjected under his feet.”

And elaborating the same argument still more, he writes thus: “We said in our previous words that our Master Christ had a beginning of his kingdom, using proofs from the divine Scriptures. One is that which says, ‘But I was appointed king by him on Zion, his holy mountain,’

another, ‘The Lord has reigned, let the peoples be angry,’ and again, ‘The Lord has reigned, let the earth rejoice.’ And in general one could show, having an abundance of countless sayings for testimony, that the man received a beginning of kingdom through the Word. If, then, he received a beginning of kingdom not more than four hundred whole years ago, it is nothing strange if the apostle says that he who obtained this kingdom so short a time ago will hand over the kingdom, clearly to God who appointed him king, as Scripture says.”

And after other things he writes thus: “So he appears to have been separated from the Father by activity alone, because of the occasion of the flesh, until the approaching time of the judgment appears, so that, when those who then pierced him have seen, according to the prophecy, the one they pierced, what remains may likewise come to pass.

For when all things are going to be subjected to Christ at the time of the end, as the apostle said, then ‘he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him.’ What, then, do we learn about the human flesh which the Word assumed for our sake not four hundred whole years ago? Will the Word have it also in the ages to come, or only until the time of the judgment? For what was said by the prophet must be confirmed in deed: ‘For they will look,’ he says, ‘on him whom they pierced’; and they pierced, clearly, the flesh.

And he adds after other things, saying: “That he did not assume our flesh so that the Word might be profited, but so that the flesh might obtain immortality through fellowship with the Word, is clear also from the Saviour's own declaration. For about the flesh, having which he conversed with the disciples, he says thus: ‘Does this offend you? What then if you see the Son of Man going away to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing.’ If, then, he confesses that the flesh profits him nothing, how is it possible that what is from the earth and profits nothing should be with the Word in the ages to come as though it were of use to him?

For this reason, it seems to me, the Almighty Master also says to him, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ Seeming to separate him by activity alone because of the human flesh, and as it were fixing for him a definite time for the session at the right hand, he says to him thus: ‘until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’

And the holy apostle, interpreting this prophetic saying of David more clearly for us, said something like this: ‘For he must reign until he has put his enemies as a footstool for his feet.’ So his human dispensation and kingdom seems to have some limit. For the saying of the apostle means nothing else than this: ‘until he has put his enemies as a footstool for his feet.’

So when he has his enemies as a footstool for his feet, he no longer needs this partial kingdom, being king of all things universally; for he reigns together with ‘God and the Father,’ whose Word he was and is.

For the Word by himself did not receive a beginning of kingdom, but the man deceived by the devil became king through the power of the Word, so that, having become king, he might conquer the devil who formerly deceived him. For this reason the Acts of the Apostles too teach thus about this man, whom the Word of God assumed and, having assumed him, sits at the right hand of the Father, saying: ‘whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration.’ And these too speak thus, as it were fixing a limit and an appointed time within which the human dispensation should be united to the Word.

For what else does ‘until the times of restoration’ mean than to signify to us an age to come, in which all things must obtain perfect restoration? If, then, Paul said that at the time of the restoration of all things creation itself also will be changed from slavery to freedom (for he says, ‘that creation itself also will be set free from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God’),

how could the form of the servant, which the Word assumed, being the form of a servant, still be with the Word? Clearly and expressly, then, it has happened that the Word's dispensation according to the flesh took place for our sake in a short time of the past and future ages. And the inspired Paul has said that, as it had a beginning, so it will have an end, saying something like this: ‘Then the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God and the Father.’”

After other things he adds to this: “So he assumed the human flesh not for his own sake but for ours. And if he appears to have assumed it for our sake, and all that concerns us will reach its end by his providence and activity at the time of the judgment, there will no longer be need even of this partial kingdom.” Having said this, Marcellus then, sensing that he had fallen into absurdity, adds this to what he said: “But if anyone should say that the human flesh is worthy of the Word for this reason, that he made it immortal through the resurrection, let him know that not everything that is immortal is worthy of God.

For God is greater even than immortality itself, he who by his own will can make even things that do not exist immortal. And that not everything immortal is worthy to be united to God is clear also from the fact that principalities and authorities and angels, which are immortal, have no share at all in the unity of God.”

Having said this, and as if sensing that he had fallen into a depth of absurdity, he tries to recall himself, in a way confessing that he knew nothing of what he was saying. Therefore he adds, saying: “But if anyone should inquire about this flesh which has become immortal in the Word, what do we say to him? That we do not think it safe to lay down dogmas about things we have not learned exactly from the divine Scriptures.

For how could those who overturn the dogmas of others do this?

But we shall say to those who wish to learn from us the exact account of this, that, obeying the holy apostle, we know that it is fitting for us to see the hidden mysteries as he himself said: ‘For now we see through a mirror in a riddle, but then face to face; now we know in part, but then we shall know fully, even as we have been fully known.’ So do not inquire of me about things I have not clearly learned from divine Scripture.

For this reason, then, I shall not be able to speak clearly even about that divine flesh which shared in the divine Word. But now I believe the divine Scriptures, that God is one, and that his Word came forth from the Father, so that ‘all things’ might come into being ‘through him’; but after the time of the judgment, and the setting right of all things, and the destruction of every opposing activity, ‘then he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him,’ ‘to God and the Father,’ so that thus the Word may be in God, as he was before.”

Such is the end that this admirable writer has brought upon the flesh of our Saviour, forgetting what he said about it earlier.

Then the man who so clearly declared that the saving body would be deserted by the Word after the time of the judgment pretends to be cautious, and says he does not know how to answer if anyone should ask him about the flesh, but would say to the questioner: Do not inquire of me about things I have not learned.

But anyone at all might have said to him: Why then do you mock yourself, man? Why do you push yourself over cliffs, defining in writing things you have not learned? Why do you not keep what you received from the church's fathers and teachers, but openly innovate, bringing a new and strange perversion into life, giving a temporary and newer beginning to the kingdom of Christ and setting an end to it, and denying the truly only-begotten Son of God, while supposing a mere word without substance and without hypostasis, which you say is nothing other than one and the same with God, which indeed anyone denying the Son of God would rightly say?

For the Word that does not subsist is not a son, as neither would the word in a man ever be called the man's son, existing only by activity in the one speaking. Yet you say, up and down, that this Word became Son of God from the Father not even four hundred whole years ago through the taking up of the flesh, and was named Jesus and Christ, and was called image “of the invisible God” and “firstborn of all creation,” and indeed then became king, beginning all these things from the time stated, and then at the time of the consummation will cease from all of them at once.

Where then did you learn these things? Who became your teacher of them, which of the bishops, what synods, what writing of church men? And where would the immortal body of the Saviour go, in your view? For confessing it immortal and naming it divine, you will surely suppose it incorruptible and indissoluble as well. And being by nature such, it remains, clearly, intact and indissoluble. But you took the Word away from it and joined him to God.

Will the body then stand alone without the Word, in immortal and incorruptible irrationality and immobility? And how will the Word himself go into God and be joined to him again after his separation from the flesh? Was he then not in God when he was with the flesh? But he was in him always, being co-eternal and one and the same with God. How then was he in the body? If he dwelt in it like a soul, he will then be in hypostasis, separated from the Father, living and subsisting in the flesh which he assumed.

What then prevented him from confessing that he was the living Son of God even before the founding of the world? But perhaps he would say that he was in the body by activity alone, not by subsistence of substance; for, he says, being with the flesh by effective activity alone (by moving it and doing all that is recorded in the Gospels), he was joined to God in substance, being his Word, inseparable and undivided.

If he should say this, let him answer our question: did the Word's activity reach to this flesh alone, and not to other men too, the saints of God? And does not the same Word act in all the other works of the Word's creation? Indeed we have learned that “by the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm,” and “all things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being.” So he acts in all things.

We have learned from the divine Scriptures also that “the word of the Lord came to Hosea the son of Beeri,” and “the word of the Lord came to Isaiah the son of Amoz,” and “which word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.” And in each prophet the same Word of God was active. Did all those, then, share equal dignity with the only-begotten Son of God, and did the Saviour have nothing more, if indeed he was moved by activity alone by the Word joined to God?

But Marcellus does not even allow the Christ of God to bear equal things with the prophets. For they will obtain eternal life, immortal and unending, living for all the ages in the proclaimed kingdom of heaven and enjoying good things “which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and have not entered the heart of man”; but the Christ of God himself, the common Saviour of all, “the firstborn of the dead,” the hope of the resurrection of the saints, will alone then be left behind, his kingdom ceasing and his life-giving flesh being left deserted and without reason, so that according to Marcellus's teaching he neither pre-exists as Son of God nor endures for ever.

Rightly, then, these things moved the truly God-loving and thrice-blessed emperor against the man, although he had flattered him a thousand times and gone through many praises of the emperor in his treatise. These things forced the holy synod, too, gathered in the imperial city from various provinces, Pontus and Cappadocia, Asia and Phrygia and Bithynia, Thrace and the regions beyond, to brand the man publicly by its writing against him, even unwilling. These things compelled us too to proceed to the examination in hand, both supporting what the holy synod decided and satisfying the fellow ministers who ordered us to do this.

Most of all, I think this writing has been necessary because of those who thought the man had been wronged. For we must heal the suspicion of our brothers by making plain the unbelief toward the Son of God that lurked in him for a long time but has now been exposed through his own writing, which he brought of his own accord when no one summoned him, and, putting it into the emperor's hands, asked him to judge its contents: hoping, perhaps, that because of his praises of the emperor he himself would obtain favour with the emperor, and the bishops he had abused would be subjected to punishment.

But the outcome did not go as he hoped. For God was the judge of these things, and Christ Jesus himself, who was rejected by the writer, who, seeing the man's secrets, arranged that he should become his own accuser and refutation with no one compelling him. Hence he came to the emperor priding himself on his treatise, but the emperor handed over the judging of its contents to the synod, and the holy synod of God rejected the writing, rightly, because it confesses neither a pious beginning nor a pious end of the Son of God.