ng Christ descended on the man Jesus after the baptism, and
left Him before the crucifixion, so that, while Jesus suffered, Christ
remained impassible [118:1]; or it may describe the pure docetism, which
maintained that our Lord's body was a mere phantom body, so that His
birth and life and death alike were only apparent, and not real [118:2];
or it may have some reference different from either. I cannot myself
doubt that the expression is borrowed from the First Epistle of St John,
and there it seems to refer to Cerinthus, the contemporary of the
Apostle [118:3]; but Polycarp may have used it with a much wider
reference. Under any circumstances, though it would no doubt apply to
Marcion, who held strong docetic views, it would apply to almost every
sect of Gnostics besides. The same may be said of the second position
attacked, 'Whosoever doth not confess the testimony of the cross,' which
might include not only divers Gnostic sects, but many others as well.
But the case is wholly different with the third, 'Whosoever perverteth
the oracles of the Lord to (serve) his own lusts, and saith that there
is neither resurrection nor judgment.' To this type of error, and this
only, the description 'first-born of Satan' is applied in the text, and
of this I venture to say that it is altogether inapplicable to Marcion.
No doubt Marcion, like every other heretical teacher of the second
century, or indeed of any century, did 'pervert the oracles of the Lord'
by his tortuous interpretations; but he did not pervert them 'to his own
lusts.' The high moral character of Marcion was unimpeachable, and is
recognized by the orthodox writers of the second century; the worst
charge which they bring against him is disappointed ambition. He was an
ascetic of the most uncompromising and rigorous type. I cannot but
regard it as a significant fact that when Scholten wishes to fasten this
denunciation on Marcion, he stops short at 'pervert the oracles of the
Lord,' and takes no account of the concluding words 'to his own lusts,'
though these contain the very sting of the accusation [119:1]. Obviously
the allusion here is to that antinomian license which many early Gnostic
teachers managed to extract from the spiritual teaching of the Gospel.
We find germs of this immoral doctrine a full half century before the
professed date of Polycarp's Epistle, in the incipient Gnosticism which
St Paul rebukes at Corinth [119:2]. We have still clearer indications o