3. Concerning Marcion.[112]
p. 370. 29. Marcion of Pontus, much madder than these, passing over many opinions of the majority and pressing on to the more shameless, supposed that there were two principles of the All,[113] one good and the other bad. And he, thinking that he was bringing in some new [doctrine], manufactured a school filled with folly and of Cynic life, being himself a lewd one.[114] He thought that the multitude would not notice that he chanced to be a disciple not of Christ, but of Empedocles, who was very much earlier, and he laid down and taught that there were two causes of the All, [i. e.] Strife and Love.[115] For what says Empedocles on the conduct of the cosmos? If we have said it before,[116] yet I will not now keep silence, if only for the sake of comparing p. 371. the heresy of this plagiarist[117] [with the source]. He says that all the elements of which the cosmos was compounded and consists are six, to wit:—two material, [viz.] Air and Water; two instruments, whereby the material elements are arranged[118] and changed about, [viz.] Fire and Air; and two which work with the instruments and fashion matter, [viz.] Strife and Love. He says something like this:—
Hear first the four roots of all things:
Shining Zeus and life-bearing Here and Aïdoneus.
And Nestis who wets with tears the source of mortals.[119]
Zeus is fire and life-bearing Here the earth which bears fruits for the support of life. But Aïdoneus is the air, because while beholding all things through it, it alone we do not see. And Nestis is water, since it is the only vehicle of food, and therefore the becoming cause of all growing things,[120] yet cannot nourish them by itself. For if it could so give nourishment, he says, living things[121] could never die of hunger, for there is always abundance of water in the cosmos.[122] Whence he calls water Nestis, because it is a becoming cause of nourishment, yet cannot itself nourish growing things. These things then are, to sum them up in outline, those which comprise the foundation[123] of the cosmos [i. e.] water and Earth from which all things come, p. 372. Fire and Spirit[124] the tools and agents, and Strife and Love which fashion all things with skill. And Love is a certain peace and even mindedness and natural affection,[125] which determines that the cosmos shall be perfect and complete; but Strife ever rends asunder that which is one and divides it and makes many things out of one. Therefore the cause of the whole creation is Strife, which [cause] he calls baneful, that is deadly.[126] For it takes care that through every aeon, its creation persists. And Strife the deadly is the Demiurge and maker of all things which have come into being by birth; but Love, of their leading-forth from the cosmos and transformation and return to unity.[127] Concerning which, Empedocles [says] that there are two immortal and unbegotten things which have never yet had a source of existence. He speaks, however, somehow like this:—
For it was aforetime and will be; never, I ween,
Will the unquenchable aeon lack these two.[128]
p. 373. But what are these two? Strife and Love. For they had no source of existence, but pre-existed and ever were, being through their unbegotten nature incorruptible. But Fire [and Water] and Earth and Air die and again come to life. For when the things which have come into being through Strife die, Love takes them and leads them and adds and attaches them to the All,[129] so that the All may remain One, being ever marshalled by Love in one fashion and form. Yet when Love creates the One from many things, and arranges the things which have been scattered in the One, Strife again rends them away from the One, and makes them [into] many, that is, Fire, Water, Earth [and] Air, whence are produced animals and plants and whatever parts of the cosmos we perceive. And concerning the form[130] of the cosmos as ordered by Love, he speaks somehow like this:—