Tertullian

“ Besides, [41] how could His kingdom be still standing, with its boundaries, and laws, and functions, whom, even if the whole world were left entire to Him, Marcion’s god could possibly seem to have overcome as “the stronger than He,” if it were not in consequence of His law that even Marcionites were constantly dying, by returning in their dissolution [42] to the ground, and were so often admonished by even a scorpion, that the Creator had by no means been overcome? ”

“ For if you suppose the meaning to be, “If I by Beelzebub, etc., by whom your sons?”—as if He would reproach them with having the power of Beelzebub,—you are met at once by the preceding sentence, that “Satan cannot be divided against himself.” [33] So that it was not by Beelzebub that even they were casting out demons, but (as we have said) by the power of the Creator; and that He might make this understood, He adds: “But if I with the finger of God cast out demons, is not the kingdom of God come near unto you?” ”

“ Accordingly, the preceding similitude [22] represents the man who went at night and begged for the loaves, in the light of a friend and not a stranger, and makes him knock at a friend’s house and not at a stranger’s. But even if he has offended, man is more of a friend with the Creator than with the god of Marcion. ”