Tertullian, Against Marcion 6
All this shows whose God's wisdom Paul speaks of among the mature: the God who stripped the wise of their wisdom, nullified the experts' prudence, and drove the world's wisdom mad, choosing its foolish elements and arranging them for salvation. He says this wisdom lay hidden in secret among the foolish, the insignificant, and the dishonored, veiled under figures, allegories, and riddles, only to be unveiled later in Christ. The Creator set Christ as a light to the nations and promised through Isaiah to disclose invisible, hidden treasures (Isaiah). It is simply incredible that a God who has done absolutely nothing — nothing in which anything could be thought hidden — should have hidden something. If such a God existed, He could not remain hidden, let alone His mysteries. The Creator, by contrast, is well known, and so are His mysteries, openly active in Israel, though cloaked in symbolic forms where God's wisdom took delight. This wisdom is to be declared among the mature at the proper time, having been purposed in God's plan before the ages. Whose ages, if not the Creator's? If the ages are structured by times, and times are composed of days, months, and years, and days, months, and years are marked by the sun, moon, and stars that the Creator set in place — 'and they will be for signs of months and years' — then the ages belong to the Creator, and whatever is said to have been purposed before the ages belongs to no one else but the One whose ages they are. Let Marcion prove the ages of his own god; let him produce the world itself in which ages are reckoned, a vessel of time, and the signs or mechanisms that govern them. If he demonstrates nothing, I return to my point: why did the Creator purpose our glory before the ages? One might suppose He purposed it before the ages to reveal it when the age dawned. But He does this only after nearly all the Creator's ages have already run their course. He purposed it in vain before the ages, and not so much within the ages what He would reveal almost after the ages. For it is not in the nature of the One who delays in revealing to have rushed in purposing.
Latin
Igitur per haec omnia ostendit, cuius dei sapientiam loquatur inter perfectos, eius scilicet, qui sapientiam sapientium abstulerit et prudentiam prudentium inritam fecerit, qui infatuauerit sapientia mundi, stulta eligens eius et disponens in salutem. hanc dicit sapientiam in occulto fuisse, quae fuerit in stultis et in pusillis et (in) inhonestis, quae latuerit etiam sub figuris, allegoriis et aenigmatibus. reuelanda postmodum in Christo, posito in lumen nationum a creatore promittente per Esaiae uocem patefacturum se thesauros inuisibiles et occultos. nam ut absconderit aliquid is deus, qui nihil egit omnino, in quod aliquid abscondisse existimaretur, satis incredibile. ipse si esset, latere non posset, nedum aliqua eius sacramenta. creator autem tam ipse notus quam et sacramenta eius, palam scilicet decurrentia apud Israhel, sed de significantiis obumbrata, in quibus sapientia dei delitiscebat. inter perfectos narranda suo in tempore, proposita uero in proposito dei ante saecula. cuius et saecula, nisi creatoris? si enim et saecula temporibus structa sunt, tempora autem diebus et mensibus et annis compinguntur, dies porro et menses et anni solibus et lunis et sideribus creatoris signantur in hoc ab eo positis, — et erunt enim, inquit, in signa mensium et annorum — apparet et saecula creatoris esse et omne, quod ante saecula propositum dicatur, non alterius esse, quam cuius et saecula. aut probet dei sui saecula Marcion; ostendat et mundum ipsum, in quo saecula deputentur, uas quodammodo temporum, et signa aliqua uel organa eorum. si nihil demonstrat, reuertor, ut et illud dicam: cur autem ante saecula creatoris proposuit gloriam nostram? posset uideri eam ante saecula proposuisse, quam introductione saeculi reuelasset. at cum id facit paene iam totis saeculis creatoris prodactis, uane ante saecula proposuit et non magis intra saecula quod reuelaturus erat paene post saecula. non enim eius est festinasse in proponendo, cuius est retardasse in reuelando.