Against Marcion 3.4

He disdained, I suppose, to imitate the order of our God, as one who displeased him and was above all to be refuted. A new god, he chose to come in a new way: a son before the father's acknowledgement, and one sent before the commissioner's authority, so as to introduce a most monstrous faith as well, by which one would believe that Christ had come before one knew that he existed. It also falls to me to take up this question: why did he not come after Christ? For when I consider his god, so patient for so long an age with a most harsh Creator, who meanwhile was announcing his own Christ to mankind, I say that for whatever reason he did this, deferring both his revelation and his intervention, for that same reason he ought to have shown patience with the Creator in his Christ too, who was going to carry out his arrangements, so that when every operation of the rival god and the rival Christ had been completed and fulfilled, he might then bring in his own arrangements over them. But if he repented of so great patience, in that he did not persevere to the end of the Creator's affairs, he tolerated in vain the foretelling of that god's Christ, whose appearing he did not tolerate. Either he broke into the course of another's time without reason, or without reason he did not break into it for so long. What held him back, or what disturbed him? In fact he offended both ways: revealed so late after the Creator, and so hastily before his Christ. The one he ought to have exposed long ago, the other not yet: he should not have endured the one raging so long, nor disturbed the other while still at rest. Toward both he falls short of the title of the “good God,” and shows himself changeable and uncertain: lukewarm toward the Creator, hot against Christ, and futile in both directions. For he no more restrained the Creator than he blocked Christ. The Creator remains just what he is; and Christ will come just as he is written. Why did he come after the Creator, whom he could not correct? Why was he revealed before that god's Christ, whom he could not call back? Or if he corrected the Creator, being revealed after him so that what needed correcting should come first, then he ought equally to have waited for his Christ in order to correct him too, and so be his later corrector as well as the Creator's. It is another matter if he too is to come again after him, so that in his first coming he advanced against the Creator, destroying his law and prophets, and in his second advances against Christ, refuting his kingdom. Then, therefore, he will complete his order; then, perhaps, he should be believed. Or if his business is already finished now, then he will come in vain, since he will have nothing to accomplish.