fferently,
are the clearest proof that Marcion was a religious character, that he
had in general nothing to do with principles, but with living beings
whose power he felt, and that what he ultimately saw in the Gospel was
not an explanation of the world, but redemption from the
world,[374]--redemption from a world, which even in the best that it can
offer, has nothing that can reach the height of the blessing bestowed in
Christ.[375] Special attention may be called to the following
particulars.

1. Marcion explained the Old Testament in its literal sense and rejected
every allegorical interpretation. He recognised it as the revelation of
the creator of the world and the god of the Jews, but placed it, just on
that account, in sharpest contrast to the Gospel. He demonstrated the
contradictions between the Old Testament and the Gospel in a voluminous
work (the [Greek: antitheseis]).[376] In the god of the former book he
saw a being whose character was stern justice, and therefore anger;
contentiousness and unmercifulness. The law which rules nature and man
appeared to him to accord with the characteristics of this god and the
kind of law revealed by him, and therefore it seemed credible to him
that this god is the creator and lord of the world ([Greek:
kosmokrator]). As the law which governs the world is inflexible, and
yet, on the other hand, full of contradictions, just and again brutal,
and as the law of the Old Testament exhibits the same features, so the
god of creation was to Marcion a being who united in himself the whole
gradations of attributes from justice to malevolence, from obstinacy to
inconsistency.[377] Into this conception of the creator of the world,
the characteristic of which is that it cannot be systematised, could
easily be fitted the Syrian Gnostic theory which regards him as an evil
being, because he belongs to this world and to matter. Marcion did not
accept it in principle,[378] but touched it lightly and adopted certain
inferences.[379] On the basis of the Old Testament and of empirical
observation, Marcion divided men into two classes, good and evil, though
he regarded them all, body and soul, as creatures of the demiurge. The
good are those who strive to fulfil the law of the demiurge. These are
outwardly better than those who refuse him obedience. But the
distinction found here is not the decisive one. To yield to the
promptings of Divine grace is the only decisive distinction, and those
jus