Against Marcion 2.7

By this definition everything is kept safe for God: the nature of his goodness, the reason of his arrangement, and the fullness of his foreknowledge and power. You ought, however, to require of God also the utmost steadfastness and pre-eminent faithfulness in every arrangement he makes, so that you stop asking whether anything could have happened against God's will. For if you hold fast to God's steadfastness and faithfulness, which must be upheld by his good and rational arrangements, you will not be surprised either that God did not intervene against what he did not want to happen, in order to preserve what he did want. For if he had once granted man freedom and power of choice, and granted them worthily, as we have shown, he had surely granted them to be enjoyed, by the very authority of the arrangement — to be enjoyed, as far as it rested with him, according to himself, that is, according to God, that is, toward good (for who will allow anything against himself?); but as far as it rested with man, according to the movements of his own freedom (for who, having once granted someone the enjoyment of a thing, does not grant him to enjoy it according to his own mind and choice?). It followed, then, that God should stand back from the freedom he had once granted man — that is, keep within himself both his foreknowledge and his superior power, through which he could have intervened to prevent man, setting out to use his freedom badly, from falling into danger. For if he had intervened, he would have rescinded the freedom of choice that he had granted in reason and goodness.

In short, suppose he had intervened; suppose he had rescinded the freedom of choice, calling man back from the tree and keeping the cheating serpent itself from meeting the woman: would not Marcion exclaim, “O futile, unstable, faithless lord, rescinding what he has established! Why had he granted free choice, if he intervenes? Why does he intervene, if he granted it?” Let him choose where to brand himself with error: in the establishing or in the rescinding. Would he not then have seemed the more deceived through lack of foreknowledge of the future, if he had stood in the way? And who would not have said that he had granted it as though not knowing how it would turn out? But even if he foreknew that man would use what he had been given badly, what is so worthy of God as steadfastness, as faithfulness to his arrangements, whatever they are? It was for man to see to it, if he did not rightly discharge what he had rightly received. He himself would be guilty before the law he refused to obey — not God. Or should the lawgiver himself cheat his own law by not allowing what it prescribed to be fulfilled? These speeches, which you would most fittingly have made against the Creator if he had obstructed man's free will out of the providence and power you demand, now whisper to yourself on the Creator's behalf: that he showed steadfastness and faithfulness in his arrangements, as being both rational and good.