Against Marcion 1.26

But here it is enough to show that the god is most perverse in the very proclamation of his solitary goodness, for which they refuse to ascribe to him such movements of mind as they censure in the Creator. For if he neither rivals nor is angry nor condemns nor afflicts, since he does not even act as judge, I do not see how any system of moral rules can hold for him — and a fuller one at that. For how can it be that he lays down precepts he will not enforce, forbids sins he will not punish, because he will not judge, being a stranger, of course, to all feelings of severity and punishment? Why does he forbid the doing of what he does not avenge when done, when it would have been much more right not to forbid what he was not going to avenge than not to avenge what he had forbidden? Indeed he ought to have permitted it outright, since he would forbid without cause, not meaning to avenge. For even now what is forbidden without punishment is tacitly permitted. And surely he forbids the doing only of what he does not like to be done. He is utterly stupid, then, who is not offended by the doing of what he does not like to be done, since offence is the companion of frustrated will. Or if he is offended, he must be angry; if he is angry, he must avenge. For vengeance is the fruit of anger, anger the due of offence, and offence, as I said, the companion of frustrated will. But he does not avenge; therefore neither is he offended; if he is not offended, then neither is his will injured when what he did not will to be done is done; and sin is then done in accordance with his will, since what does not injure the will is not done against the will.

Or if it is to be the part of divine virtue or goodness to be unwilling that a thing be done and to forbid it, yet not to be moved if it is done, we reply that he was already moved who was unwilling, and that it is idle for him not to be moved at the deed who was moved against its being done, when he did not will that it be done; for by being unwilling he forbade it. And did he not also judge, in being unwilling that it be done and therefore forbidding it? For he judged that it should not be done, and by forbidding he pronounced it. So he too already judges. If it is unworthy of God to judge — or if it is worthy of God to judge only so far as merely to be unwilling and to forbid, not also to avenge what is done — yet nothing is so unworthy of God as not to carry out what he was unwilling and forbade to be done. First, because he owes to any sentence and law of his a sanction, for its authority and to make obedience necessary. Second, because what he was unwilling to have done, and by being unwilling forbade, must be the rival of the good; and it is more unworthy of God to spare evil than to punish it — above all for the supremely good God, who is not plainly good in any other way than as the rival of evil, so that he exercises his love of good by hatred of evil and fulfils his protection of good by overthrowing evil.