Controversy Over Baptism for the Dead: Marcion, besides being condemned for his many errors, is also censured by Irenaeus for believing in salvation for the dead, concerning which, it must be acknowledged, Marcion did bold peculiar views; but that is no reason why the general principle should be condemned.[A] He taught that Jesus Christ went to Hades and preached there, and brought hence all that believed on him. "The ancients," continues Irenaeus, as quoted by Lardner, "being of opinion that eternal life is not to be obtained but through faith in Jesus Christ, and that God is too merciful to let men perish for not hearing the Gospel, supposed that the Lord preached also to the dead, that they might have the same advantage with the living." He further adds, "In the language of Marcion and the fathers, hell does not necessarily mean the place of the damned; in that place is Tartarus, the place of torment, and Paradise, or the bosom of Abraham, a place of rest and refreshment. In that part of Hades, Jesus found the just men of the Old Testament. They were not miserable, but were in a place of comfort and pleasure." "For Christ," he continues, "promiseth the Jews after this life, rest in Hades, even in the bosom of Abraham." This far the doctrine of Marcion is in strict agreement with the New Testament, though denounced as blasphemy by his opponent. The unfortunate part of Marcion's doctrine on this head is that he taught that Cain and the wicked of Sodom and the Egyptians, and in fact all the nations in general, though they had lived in all manner of wickedness, were saved by the Lord; but that Abel, Enoch, Noah, and the patriarchs and prophets and other righteous men who walked with God and pleased Him in their earth-life, did not obtain salvation, because they suspected that in the preaching of Christ in the spirit world there was some scheme of deception to lead them away from their present qualified believe in Him, for which reason, as he says, "their souls remained in Hell."[B]
[Footnote A: Lardner Works, vol. viii, 449; also I Peter iii:18-21; Ibid, iv:6; I Cor. xv:29.]
[Footnote B: Ibid, p. 460.]
Marcion is also condemned for believing in the eternity of matter.[A] So, too, Hermogenes is censured by Tertullian for the same cause, and for arguing that God made the world out of matter and could not have made it out of nothing.[B]
[Footnote A: Ibid. p. 581-2.]
[Footnote B: Lardner, vol. viii, p. 345.]
And so throughout there is censure and counter censure between the orthodox and the heretics, and it is difficult at times to determine which are the orthodox and which the heretics, so frequently do they change places. Nor was there any improvement in the ages that succeeded these that have been briefly considered. The editor of Dr. Jortin's learned work on Ecclesiastical History, William Trollope, on a passage of Jortin's on the early fathers, says of the fathers of the fourth century:
"After the council of Nice,[A] a class of writers sprung up, greatly inferior to their predecessors, in whatever light their pretensions are viewed. Sadly deficient in learning, prejudiced in opinion, and inelegant in style, they cannot be admitted for a moment into competition with those who were contemporary with the Apostles and their immediate successors."[B]
[Footnote A: Held in 325 A. D.]
[Footnote B: Jortin, vol. i, p. 166, note.]