Book 5 · Introduction

Composed and put forth lawlessly; hence, too,

Touched briefly flesh’s hope, Christ’s victory,

5  And false ways’ speciousness.  The next doth teach

The Law’s conjoined mysteries, and what

In the new covenant the one God hath

Delivered.  The third shows the race, create

From freeborn mother, to be ministers

10  Sacred to seers and patriarchs; whom Thou,

O Christ, in number twice six out of all,

Chosest; and, with their names, the lustral times

Of our own elders noted, (times preserved

On record,) showing in whose days appeared

15  The author of this wickedness, unknown,

Lawless, and roaming, cast forth with his brood.

The fourth, too, the piacular rites recalls

Of the old Law themselves, and shows them types

In which the Victim True appeared, by saints

20  Expected long since, with the holy Seed.

This fifth doth many twists and knots untie,

Rolls wholly into sight what ills soe’er

Were lurking; drawing arguments, but not

Without attesting prophet.

And although

25  With strong arms fortified we vanquish foes,

Yet hath the serpent mingled so at once

All things polluted, impious, unallowed,

Commaculate,—the blind’s path without light!

A voice contaminant!—that, all the while

30  We are contending the world’s Maker is

Himself sole God, who also spake by voice

Of seers, and proving that there is none else

Unknown; and, while pursuing Him with praise,

Who is by various endearment known,

35  Are blaming—among other fallacies—

The Unknown’s tardy times:  our subject’s fault

Will scarce keep pure our tongue.  Yet, for all that,

Guile’s many hidden venoms us enforce

(Although with double risk) to ope our words.

40  Who, then, the God whom ye say is the true,

Unknown to peoples, alien, in a word,

To all the world?  Him whom none knew before?

Came he from high?  If ’tis his own he seeks,

Why seek so late?  If not his own, why rob

45  Bandit-like? and why ply with words unknown

So oft throughout Law’s rein a People still

Lingering ’neath the Law?  If, too, he comes

To pity and to succour all combined,

And to re-elevate men vanquisht quite

50  By death’s funereal weight, and to release

Spirit from flesh’s bond obscene, whereby

The inner man (iniquitously dwarfed)

Is held in check; why, then, so late appear

His ever-kindness, duteous vigilance?

55  How comes it that he ne’er at all before

Offered himself to any, but let slip

Poor souls in numbers? and then with his mouth

Seeks to regain another’s subjects:  ne’er

Expected; not known; sent into the orb.

60  Seeking the “ewe” he had not lost before,

The Shepherd ought to have disrobed himself

Of flesh, as if his victor-self withal

Had ever been a spirit, and as such

Willed to rescue all expelled souls,

65  Without a body, everywhere, and leave

The spoiled flesh to earth; wholly to fill

The world on one day equally with corpses

To leave the orb void; and to raise the souls

To heaven.  Then would human progeny

70  At once have ceased to be born; nor had

Thereafter any scion of your kith

Been born, or spread a new pest o’er the orb.

Or (since at that time none of all these things

Is shown to have been done) he should have set

75  A bound to future race; with solid heart

Nuptial embraces would he, in that case

Have sated quite; made men grow torpid, reft

Of fruitful seed; made irksome intercourse

With female sex; and closed up inwardly

80  The flesh’s organs genital:  our mind

Had had no will, no potent faculty

Our body:  after this the “inner man”

Could withal, joined with blood, have been infused

And cleaved to flesh, and would have ever been

85  Perishing.  Ever perishes the “ewe:”

And is there then no power of saving her?

Since man is ever being born beneath

Death’s doom, what is the Shepherd’s work, if thus

The “ewe” is stated to be found?  Unsought

90  In that case, but not rescued, she is proved.

But now choice is allowed of entering

Wedlock, as hath been ever; and that choice

Sure progeny hath yoked:  nations are born

And folk scarce numerable, at whose birth

95  Their souls by living bodies are received;

Nor was it meet that Paul (though, for the time,

He did exhort some few, discerning well

The many pressures of a straitened time)

i.e., according to Marcion’s view.