t men will shew themselves less susceptible to the manifestation of
the truly good than sinners. As Marcion held the Old Testament to be a
book worthy of belief, though his disciple, Apelles, thought otherwise,
he referred all its predictions to a Messiah whom the creator of the
world is yet to send, and who, as a warlike hero, is to set up the
earthly kingdom of the "just" God.[380]

2. Marcion placed the good God of love in opposition to the creator of
the world.[381] This God has only been revealed in Christ. He was
absolutely unknown before Christ,[382] and men were in every respect
strange to him.[383] Out of pure goodness and mercy, for these are the
essential attributes of this God who judges not and is not wrathful, he
espoused the cause of those beings who were foreign to him, as he could
not bear to have them any longer tormented by their just and yet
malevolent lord.[384] The God of love appeared in Christ and proclaimed
a new kingdom (Tertull., adv. Marc. III. 24. fin.). Christ called to
himself the weary and heavy laden,[385] and proclaimed to them that he
would deliver them from the fetters of their lord and from the world. He
shewed mercy to all while he sojourned on the earth, and did in every
respect the opposite of what the creator of the world had done to men.
They who believed in the creator of the world nailed him to the cross.
But in doing so they were unconsciously serving his purpose, for his
death was the price by which the God of love purchased men from the
creator of the world.[386] He who places his hope in the Crucified can
now be sure of escaping from the power of the creator of the world, and
of being translated into the kingdom of the good God. But experience
shews that, like the Jews, men who are virtuous according to the law of
the creator of the world, do not allow themselves to be converted by
Christ; it is rather sinners who accept his message of redemption.
Christ, therefore, rescued from the under-world, not the righteous men
of the Old Testament (Iren. I. 27. 3), but the sinners who were
disobedient to the creator of the world. If the determining thought of
Marcion's view of Christianity is here again very clearly shewn, the
Gnostic woof cannot fail to be seen in the proposition that the good God
delivers only the souls, not the bodies of believers. The antithesis of
spirit and matter, appears here as the decisive one, and the good God of
love becomes the God of the spirit, the Old