ginning and end;" which, as Tertullian there very solidly proves, was really and effectually to make two gods.

The reason which induced him to embrace this opinion, as is easily to be gathered from Tertullian's treatise against him, was that puzzling question so famous in the primitive church, Pothen to kakon, or, whence was evil? For, not being willing to make God the author of evil, and withal imagining it to be a substantial nature, and to have an original cause suitable thereunto, that he might therefore throw the source and origin of it upon another, he affirmed " matter to be a natural evil principle, coeternal with God, who was contrary thereunto; from whence all other evil had its spring and rise:" and from the same reason also, as Tertullian assures us, Marcion, who saw Polycarp, the disciple of St. John, roundly declared in words at length, that there were two coeternal independent beings, the one a good God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, author of the gospel, and the fountain, source, and origin of all good; the other an evil God, the creator of the world, the giver of the law, and the cause, root, and author of all evil,

It must indeed be owned, that the Marcionites disagreed amongst themselves; for altho' Marcion himself, with several of his follow

ers, introduced but two principles, yet according to the relation of Rhodon, who lived at that time, some of them advanced farther, and asserted three eternal principles; the chief and head of whom, was one called Synerus; of which faction also was Megethius in the dialogues of Origen, who there affirms, that "there were three principles; the first the good God, who was the father of our Lord Jesus Christ; the second, the creator of the world; and the third, the devil."

But the body of the Marcionites, and their master himself, maintained only two gods; the one a good God, father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and God of the Christians; the other an evil God, maker of heaven and earth, and God of the Jews. So Irenæus, who lived in those days, assures us in several places, that "the followers of Marcion held but two gods, who were naturally so, being distant from one another, the one a good, and the other an evil God" and Marcus, the champion for this sect of the Marcionites, in the dialogues of Origen, affirms, that for his part," he believed not three principles, but only two, who were equally self-existent, without beginning, infinite, and in every place."

But though this impious and abominable tenet was in those days generally known under

ས་

the name of Marcionitism, as it was afterwards under that of Manicheism, yet it was both hatched and vented before Marcion, and much more before Manes; for, as for Marcion, he is by none allowed to have been the first inventor thereof, but all affirm him to have received it from his master Cerdon, a noted heretic in the early days of christianity, of whom Tertullian writes, " that he introduced two beginnings, that is, two Gods, a good God, and a fierce God; the good one being the superior god, and the firece one the creator of the world:" and Theodoret, that "he maintained, that there were two Gods; the one a good God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ; the other a just God, the creator of all things:" and even before Cerdon, as well as before his scholar Marcion, was this blasphemous heresy broached in the church for Theodoret informs us, that both Cerdon and Marcion took the occasion of their blasphemy from Simon Magus: and Epiphanius positively assures us, that the author of two eternal principles, a good and a bad one, went to Jerusalem about the days of the apostles, and there disputed with the elders about the unity of the godhead, and the creation of the world.

F

This blasphemous heresy then being so early espoused from the very apostolical age, the belief of one God was inserted in the creed in opposition thereunto, as it may be gathered from Irenæus; who, after he hath recited the heresies of the Valentinians, and others, informs us in contradiction thereunto, that "the church had received from the apostles and their disciples, to believe in one God, the father almighty, &c. And in various places, throughout his whole five books, he confutes the Marcionites dotage of two Gods, shewing it to be not only inconsistent with reason, and opposite unto the scripture, but also contra, dictory to the faith and belief of the church; whence Epiphanius in his large exposition of the creed, in opposition to the aforesaid here, tics, tells us, that by this clause we are obliged to believe," that there is but one God, who was the God both of the law and the gospel, both of the old and new testament." And Tertullian in his prescriptions against the Va lentinians, Marcionites, and other heretics, sends them to the rule of faith, wherein it is professed that there is but one God: And, that I may add yet one instance more, it is very observable in the dialogues of Origen, that when Adamantius, who sustained the part of an orthodox Christian against the Marcionites,

was by agreement first of all to recite the Catholic faith, which he would defend in contradiction to the forementioned heretics; he begins his creed with, "I believe there is but one God;" and when one of the Marcionites laboured hard to prove his three, and the other his two Gods, Adamantius so invincibly evidenced the unity of the godhead, that Eutropius, the judge of the disputation, declared the victory to be on his side; and when in the end of the last dialogue he repeats the articles of the true Christian faith, he begins it with the belief of " one and only God ;" which makes it very probable, that this clause in the creed of" one God," was in part designed to contradict the blasphemous and impious conceit of those heretics, who introduced more Gods than one. But, Secondly, this clause may be also considered in relation to what immediately follows in the creed, viz. "the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth;" in which regard it is a declaration, that we believe this one God, and not a being different from him, to be the father and almighty creator of all things; for though some heretics owned one supreme and original God, yet they denied him the creation of the world, and his paternity and almightiness in that Catholic sense, wherein it is to be understood in