Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
So far it may look as though we are arguing on the assumption that Marcion sets up two equal gods. For while defending the position that the supreme greatness must be believed unique, and excluding equality from it, we have effectively been dealing all along with two equals—yet by showing, in the process, that they cannot be equal according to the pattern of the supreme greatness, we have equally well established that there cannot be two at all. Otherwise, of course, Marcion sets up gods that are unequal: one a judge, savage, warlike; the other gentle, mild, and merely good—the best there is. Let us examine this side too, and see whether difference, at least, can accommodate two, if equality could not. Well, here too the same rule of supreme greatness will come to our aid, since it claims the whole standing of divinity for itself. For it is fitting—and, so to speak, laying a restraining hand on the sense of my opponent, who does not deny that the Creator is God—that I lay down in advance that there is no room for difference between beings whom he cannot, having confessed them equally gods, then make unequal—not because men, though called by the same name, cannot be very different from one another, but because a being will not be called God, since it will not be believed to be God, unless it is the supreme greatness. Since, then, he is compelled to acknowledge as God the one whose divinity he does not deny, he cannot be allowed to ascribe to that supreme greatness any diminishment that would subject it to another supreme greatness. For it ceases to be supreme, if it is subjected. And it is not proper to God to fall away from his own standing, that is, from being the supreme greatness. Indeed, even in that 'better' god of his, the supreme greatness itself would be put at risk, if it begins to be devalued by comparison with the Creator. So when two gods are pronounced two supreme greatnesses, neither can possibly be greater or lesser than the other, neither more exalted nor more debased than the other. Deny that the god you call worse is God at all; deny that the supreme greatness belongs to the one you believe lesser. But by confessing him a god, you have confessed both to be two supreme greatnesses. You will take nothing away from the one, and add nothing to the other. In acknowledging the divinity you have denied the difference.
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