Early References to MARCION


Justin, Apology 26:

And, thirdly, because after Christ's ascension into heaven the devils put 
forward certain men who said that they themselves were gods; and they were not 
only not persecuted by you, but even deemed worthy of honours. There was a 
Samaritan, Simon, a native of the village called Gitto, who in the reign of 
Claudius Caesar, and in your royal city of Rome, did mighty acts of magic, by 
virtue of the art of the devils operating in him. He was considered a god, and 
as a god was honoured by you with a statue, which statue was erected on the 
river Tiber, between the two bridges, and bore this inscription, in the 
language of Rome:-- 

"Simoni Deo Sancto,"(4) 

"To Simon the holy God." 

And almost all the Samaritans, and a few even of other nations, worship him, 
and acknowledge him as the first god; and a woman, Helena, who went about with 
him at that time, and had formerly been a prostitute, they say is the first 
idea generated by him. And a man, Meander, also a Samaritan, of the town 
Capparetaea, a disciple of Simon, and inspired by devils, we know to have 
deceived many while he was in Antioch by his magical art. He persuaded those 
who adhered to him that they should never die, and even now there are some 
living who hold this opinion of his. And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, 
who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some 
other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has 
caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the 
maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, 
has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we 
before said,(5) called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with 
the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of 
philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and 
shameful deeds(1)--the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and 
eating human flesh--we know not; but we do know that they are neither 
persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions. But 
I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, 
which, if you wish to read it, I will give you. 


Justin, Apology 56-58

But the evil spirits were not satisfied with saying, before Christ's 
appearance, that those who were said to be sons of Jupiter were born of him; 
but after He had appeared, and been born among men, and when they learned how 
He had been foretold by the prophets, and knew that He should be believed on 
and looked for by every nation, they again, as was said above, put forward 
other men, the Samaritans Simon and Menander, who did many mighty works by 
magic, and deceived many, and still keep them deceived. For even among 
yourselves, as we said before,(2) Simon was in the royal city Rome in the 
reign of Claudius Caesar, and so greatly astonished the sacred senate and 
people of the Romans, that he was considered a god, and honoured, like the 
others whom you honour as gods, with a statue. Wherefore we pray that the 
sacred senate and your people may, along with yourselves, be arbiters of this 
our memorial, in order that if any one be entangled by that man's doctrines, 
he may learn the truth, and so be able to escape error; and as for the statue, 
if you please, destroy it. 

[57] Nor can the devils persuade men that there will be no conflagration for 
the punishment of the wicked; as they were unable to effect that Christ should 
be hidden after He came. But this only can they effect, that they who live 
irrationally, and were brought up licentiously in wicked customs, and are 
prejudiced in their own opinions, should kill and hate us; whom we not only do 
not hate, but, as is proved, pity and endeavour to lead to repentance. For we 
do not fear death, since it is acknowledged we must surely die; and there is 
nothing new, but all things continue the same in this administration of 
things; and if satiety overtakes those who enjoy even one year of these 
things, they ought to give heed to our doctrines, that they may live eternally 
free both from suffering and from want. But if they believe that there is 
nothing after death, but declare that those who die pass into insensibility, 
then they become our benefactors when they set us free from sufferings and 
necessities of this life, and prove themselves to be wicked, and inhuman, and 
bigoted. For they kill us with no intention of delivering us, but cut us off 
that we may be deprived of life and pleasure. 

[58] And, as we said before, the devils put forward Marcion of Pontus, who is 
even now teaching men to deny that God is the maker of all things in heaven 
and on earth, and that the Christ predicted by the prophets is His Son, and 
preaches another god besides the Creator of all, and likewise another son. And 
this man many have believed, as if he alone knew the truth, and laugh at us, 
though they have no proof of what they say, but are carried away irrationally 
as lambs by a wolf, and become the prey of atheistical doctrines, and of 
devils. For they who are called devils attempt nothing else than to seduce men 
from God who made them, and from Christ His first-begotten; and those who are 
unable to raise themselves above the earth they have riveted, and do now 
rivet, to things earthly, and to the works of their own hands; but those who 
devote themselves to the contemplation of things divine, they secretly beat 
back; and if they have not a wise sober-mindedness, and a pure and passionless 
life, they drive them into godlessness. 

Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1

[1.27.1] Cerdo was one who took his system from the followers of Simon, and 
came to live at Rome in the time of Hyginus, who held the ninth place in the 
episcopal succession from the apostles downwards. He taught that the God 
proclaimed by the law and the prophets was not the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. For the former was known, but the latter unknown; while the one also 
was righteous, but the other benevolent. 

[..2] Marcion of Pontus succeeded him, and developed his doctrine. In so 
doing, he advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as 
God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to 
take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to 
Himself. But Jesus being derived from that father who is above the God that 
made the world, and coming into Judaea in the times of Pontius Pilate the 
governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Caesar, was manifested in the 
form of a man to those who were in Judaea, abolishing the prophets and the 
law, and all the works of that God who made the world, whom also he calls 
Cosmocrator. Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, 
removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and 
setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in which the Lord is 
recorded as most dearly confessing that the Maker of this universe is His 
Father. He likewise persuaded his disciples that he himself was more worthy of 
credit than are those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us, 
furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a fragment of it. In like 
manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul, removing all that is said by 
the apostle respecting that God who made the world, to the effect that He is 
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also those passages from the 
prophetical writings which the apostle quotes, in order to teach us that they 
announced beforehand the coming of the Lord. 

[..3] Salvation will be the attainment only of those souls which had learned 
his doctrine; while the body, as having been taken from the earth, is 
incapable of sharing in salvation. In addition to his blasphemy against God 
Himself, he advanced this also, truly speaking as with the mouth of the devil, 
and saying all things in direct opposition to the truth,--that Cain, and those 
like him, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and others like them, and, in 
fine, all the nations who walked in all sorts of abomination, were saved by 
the Lord, on His descending into Hades, and on their running unto Him, and 
that they welcomed Him into their kingdom. But the serpent(3) which was in 
Marcion declared that Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and those other righteous men 
who sprang(4) from the patriarch Abraham, with all the prophets, and those who 
were pleasing to God, did not partake in salvation. For since these men, he 
says, knew that their God was constantly tempting them, so now they suspected 
that He was tempting them, and did not run to Jesus, or believe His 
announcement: and for this reason he declared that their souls remained in 
Hades. 

[..4] But since this man is the only one who has dared openly to mutilate the 
Scriptures, and unblushingly above all others to inveigh against God, I 
purpose specially to refute him, convicting him out of his own writings; and, 
with the help of God, I shall overthrow him out of those(1) discourses of the 
Lord and the apostles, which are of authority with him, and of which he makes 
use. At present, however, I have simply been led to mention him, that thou 
mightest know that all those who in any way corrupt the truth, and injuriously 
affect the preaching of the Church, are the disciples and successors of Simon 
Magus of Samaria. Although they do not confess the name of their master, in 
order all the more to seduce others, yet they do teach his doctrines. They set 
forth, indeed, the name of Christ Jesus as a sort of lure, but in various ways 
they introduce the impieties of Simon; and thus they destroy multitudes, 
wickedly disseminating their own doctrines by the use of a good name, and, 
through means of its sweetness and beauty, extending to their hearers the 
bitter and malignant poison of the serpent, the great author of apostasy? 
       
[.28.1] Many offshoots of numerous heresies have already been formed from 
those heretics we have described. This arises from the fact that numbers of 
them--indeed, we may say all--desire themselves to be teachers, and to break 
off from the particular heresy in which they have been involved. Forming one 
set of doctrines out of a totally different system of opinions, and then again 
others from others, they insist upon teaching something new, declaring 
themselves the inventors of any sort of opinion which they may have been able 
to call into existence. To give an example: Springing from Saturninus and 
Marcion, those who are called Encratites (self-controlled) preached against 
marriage, thus setting aside the original creation of God, and indirectly 
blaming Him who made the male and female for the propagation of the human 
race. Some of those reckoned among them have also introduced abstinence from 
animal food, thus proving themselves ungrateful to God, who formed all things. 
They deny, too, the salvation of him who was first created. It is but lately, 
however, that this opinion has been invented among them. A certain man named 
Tatian first introduced the blasphemy. He was a hearer of Justin's, and as 
long as he continued with him he expressed no such views; but after his 
martyrdom he separated from the Church, and, excited and puffed up by the 
thought of being a teacher, as if he were superior to others, he composed his 
own peculiar type of doctrine. He invented a system of certain invisible 
AEons, like the followers of Valentinus; while, like Marcion and Saturninus, 
he declared that marriage was nothing else than corruption and fornication.(3) 
But his denial of Adam's salvation was an opinion due entirely to himself. 

[.28.2] Others, again, following upon Basilides and Carpocrates, have 
introduced promiscuous intercourse and a plurality of wives, and are 
indifferent about eating meats sacrificed to idols, maintaining that God does 
not greatly regard such matters. But why continue? For it is an impracticable 
attempt to mention all those who, in one way or another, have fallen away from 
the truth. 


Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3

[3.4.3] For, prior to Valentinus, those who follow Valentinus had no 
existence; nor did those from Marcion exist before Marcion; nor, in short, had 
any of those malignant-minded people, whom I have above enumerated, any being 
previous to the initiators and inventors of their perversity. For Valentinus 
came to Rome in the time of Hyginus, flourished under Pius, and remained until 
Anicetus. Cerdon, too, Marcion's predecessor, himself arrived in the time of 
Hyginus, who was the ninth bishop.(5) Coming frequently into the Church, and 
making public confession, he thus remained, one time teaching in secret, and 
then again making public confession; but at last, having been denounced for 
corrupt teaching, he was excommunicated(6) from the assembly of the brethren. 
Marcion, then, succeeding him, flourished under Anicetus, who held the tenth 
place of the episcopate. But the rest, who are called Gnostics, take rise from 
Menander, Simon's disciple, as I have shown; and each one of them appeared to 
be both the father and the high priest of that doctrine into which he has been 
initiated. But all these (the Marcosians) broke out into their apostasy much 
later, even during the intermediate period of the Church. 

[3.11.7] Such, then, are the first principles of the Gospel: that there is one 
God, the Maker of this universe; He who was also announced by the prophets, 
and who by Moses set forth the dispensation of the law,--[principles] which 
proclaim the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and ignore any other God or 
Father except Him. So firm is the ground upon which these Gospels rest, that 
the very heretics themselves bear witness to them, and, starting from these 
[documents], each one of them endeavours to establish his own peculiar 
doctrine. For the Ebionites, who use Matthew's Gospel(3) only, are confuted 
out of this very same, making false suppositions with regard to the Lord. But 
Marcion, mutilating that according to Luke, is proved to be a blasphemer of 
the only existing God, from those [passages] which he still retains. Those, 
again, who separate Jesus from Christ, alleging that Christ remained 
impassible, but that it was Jesus who suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark, 
if they read it with a love of truth, may have their errors rectified. Those, 
moreover, who follow Valentinus, making copious use of that according to John, 
to illustrate their conjunctions, shall be proved to be totally in error by 
means of this very Gospel, as I have shown in the first book. Since, then, our 
opponents do bear testimony to us, and make use of these [documents], our 
proof derived from them is firm and true. 


Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.1

The Euxine Sea, as it is called, is self-contradictory in its nature, and 
deceptive in its name.8 As you would not account it hospitable from its 
situation, so is it severed from our more civilised waters by a certain stigma 
which attaches to its barbarous character. The fiercest nations inhabit it, if 
indeed it can be called habitation, when life is passed in waggons. They have 
no fixed abode; their life has9 no germ of civilization; they indulge their 
libidinous desires without restraint, and for the most part naked. Moreover, 
when they gratify secret lust, they hang up their quivers on their car-
yokes,10 to warn off the curious and rash observer. Thus without a blush do 
they prostitute their weapons of war. The dead bodies of their parents they 
cut up with their sheep, and devour at their feasts. They who have not died so 
as to become food for others, are thought to have died an accursed death. 
Their women are not by their sex softened to modesty. They uncover the breast, 
from which they suspend their battle-axes, and prefer warfare to marriage. In 
their climate, too, there is the same rude nature.11 The day-time is never 
clear, the sun never cheerful;12 the sky is uniformly cloudy; the whole year 
is wintry; the only wind that blows is the angry North. Waters melt only by 
fires; their rivers flow not by reason of the ice; their mountains are 
covered13 with heaps of snow. All things are torpid, all stiff with cold. 
Nothing there has the glow14 of life, but that ferocity which has given to 
scenic plays their stories of the sacrifices15 of the Taurians, and the 
loves16 of the Colchians, and the torments17 of the Caucasus. Nothing, 
however, in Pontus is so barbarous and sad as the fact that Marcion was born 
there, fouler than any Scythian, more roving than the waggon-life18 of the 
Sarmatian, more inhuman than the Massagete, more audacious than an Amazon, 
darker than the cloud,19 (of Pontus) colder than its winter, more brittle than 
its ice, more deceitful than the Ister, more craggy than Caucasus. Nay20 more, 
the true Prometheus, Almighty God, is mangled21 by Marcion's blasphemies. 
Marcion is more savage than even the beasts of that barbarous region. For what 
beaver was ever a greater emasculator22 than he who has abolished the nuptial 
bond? What Pontic mouse ever had such gnawing powers as he who has gnawed the 
Gospels to pieces? Verily, O Euxine, thou hast produced a monster more 
credible to philosophers than to Christians. For the cynic Diogenes used to go 
about, lantern in hand, at mid-day to find a man; whereas Marcion has quenched 
the light of his faith, and so lost the God whom he had found. His disciples 
will not deny that his first faith he held along with ourselves; a letter of 
his own23 proves this; so that for the future24 a heretic may from his case25 
be designated as one who, forsaking that which was prior, afterwards chose out 
for himself that which was not in times past.26 For in as far as what was 
delivered in times past and from the beginning will be held as truth, in so 
far will that be accounted heresy which is brought in later. But another brief 
treatise27 will maintain this position against heretics, who ought to be 
refuted even without a consideration of their doctrines, on the ground that 
they are heretical by reason of the novelty of their opinions. Now, so far as 
any controversy is to be admitted, I will for the time28 (lest our compendious 
principle of novelty, being called in on all occasions to our aid, should be 
imputed to want of confidence) begin with setting forth our adversary's rule 
of belief, that it may escape no one what our main contention is to be. 

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