Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But, you say, God even swears an oath. By the god of Marcion, perhaps? No, he says, something far more absurd: by himself. What would he mean by that, if there were no other god present to his own consciousness — swearing, at the very moment of swearing, that there is absolutely no other god besides himself? So do you catch him committing perjury, or swearing an empty, meaningless oath? But he cannot be judged guilty of perjury who, as you claim, did not know there was another god — for what a man swears in ignorance is no lie. Nor, on the other hand, is his oath that there is no other god an empty one. It would only be empty if there had never been people who believed in other gods — as there were then, worshippers of idols, and as there are now, heretics. He swears, then, by himself, so that you might at least believe, on the strength of a swearing God, that there is absolutely no other god. It was you, Marcion, who forced God to do this — for even then you were foreseen and provided against! Accordingly, if he also swears in his promises or his threats, wringing out from the start a difficult faith, there is nothing unworthy of God in whatever it takes to make people believe in God. Enough already that even in his fiercest anger our God shows himself petty — when, enraged at the people over the golden calf, he demands of his servant Moses: 'Let me alone, and in my wrath I will destroy them, and I will make you into a great nation.' This is why you are so fond of declaring Moses better than his own god — an intercessor, indeed a restrainer of his wrath. For Moses said, 'Do not act this way — or else wipe me out together with them.' You and your people alike deserve pity, for you fail to recognize Christ prefigured in the person of Moses — the intercessor with the Father, the one who offers his own soul for the salvation of the people. But it is enough that the people were, for the moment, granted specifically to Moses himself. What that servant managed to request of his Lord, the Lord had already requested from himself beforehand. For it was to this end that he said to his servant, 'Let me alone, and I will destroy them' — so that Moses, by his asking and by offering himself, would not let him alone — and so that you might learn just how much a faithful man and a prophet is permitted before God.
27.