Tertullian

“ I shall not be sorry to meet him, and before anything else to point out to him the force of the law figuratively interpreted, which, in this example of a leper (who was not to be touched, but was rather to be removed from all intercourse with others) , prohibited any communication with a person who was defiled with sins, with whom the apostle also forbids us even to eat food, [7] forasmuch as the taint of sins would be communicated as if contagious, wherever a man should mix himself with the sinner. ”

“ If, however, he has not continued good, by a subsequent destruction of the law, it is a false testimony which he has since imposed upon them in his cure of the leper; because he has forsaken his goodness, in destroying the law. If, therefore, he was good whilst upholding the law, [36] he has now become evil as a destroyer of the law. However, by the support which he gave to the law, he affirmed that the law was good. For no one permits himself in the support of an evil thing. Therefore he is not only bad if he has permitted obedience to a bad law ”

“ Seven times, therefore, as if once for each, [21] did he wash in Jordan; both in order that he might celebrate the expiation of a perfect hebdomad; [22] and because the virtue and fulness of the one baptism was thus solemnly imputed [23] to Christ, alone, who was one day to establish on earth not only a revelation, but also a baptism, endued with compendious efficacy. ”

“ Rigault, in a note on the passage, imputes the obscurity to Tertullian’s arguing on the Marcionite hypothesis. “Marcion,” says he, “held that the prophets, like Elisha, belonged to the Creator, and Christ to the good God. To magnify Christ’s beneficence, he prominently dwells on the alleged fact, that Christ, although a stranger to the Creator’s world, yet vouchsafed to do good in it. This vain conceit Tertullian refutes from the Marcionite hypothesis itself. God the Creator, said they, had found Himself incapable of cleansing this Israelite ”

“ An ironical cavil from the Marcionite view.↑ Si tamen major.↑ Luke v. 14.↑ Utpote prophetatæ.↑ Emaculatum.↑ [i.e., the Great High Priest whose sacrifice is accepted of the Father, for the sins of the whole world.] ↑ Suscepturus: to carry or take away.↑ Legis indultor.↑ Advenit.↑ Atquin.↑ Formam.↑ Ab ea avertendos.↑ Aliquatenus.↑ Jam.↑ Supervacuus.↑ Gradu.↑ Ecce.↑ Sententiam.↑ Matt. v. 17.↑ Quod salvum est.↑ That is, you retain the passage in St. Luke, which relates the act of honouring the law ”