Tertullian — Against Marcion 2.14
To all points the same God meets you: striking but also healing, putting to death but also making alive, humbling but also lifting up, creating evils but also making peace—so that here too I may answer the heretics. ‘Behold,’ they say, ‘he himself professes to be creator of evils saying: I am he who creates evils.’
Embracing the shared vocabulary that muddies two species of evils in ambiguity—because both delicts and punishments are called evils—they want him understood everywhere as creator of evils so as also to be denounced author of malice. But we, applying distinction of each form, separating evils of delict and evils of punishment, evils of fault and evils of penalty, assign each part its author: of evils of sin and fault the devil; of evils of punishment and penalty God the Creator—so that that part be reckoned to malice, this to justice, of one creating evils of judgment against evils of delict.
Of these evils then the Creator professes which suit a judge—evils indeed to those on whom they are repaid, but in their own name goods, as just and defensive of goods and hostile to delicts and in this order worthy of God. Or prove them unjust so as to prove them to be reckoned to malice—that is, evils of injustice—because if they are of justice they will no longer be evils but goods, evils only to the wicked for whom even straight goods are condemned as evils.
Establish therefore that a man, voluntary despiser of divine law, unjustly received what he refused to lack; that the malice of that age was unjustly struck with rains then fires; that foulest, most superstitious Egypt, further oppressor of a guest people, was unjustly struck with tenfold chastisement.
He hardens Pharaoh’s heart—but he had deserved to be supplied unto ruin who had already denied God, who had already so often proudly shaken off his envoys, who had already added labor of work to the people; finally as Egyptian he had long been guilty before God of Gentile idolatry, sooner worshipping ibis and crocodile than the living God. He also spent the people itself—but ungrateful; he also sent bears on boys—but irreverent toward the prophet: the forwardness of an age owing modesty had to be punished.
Latin
Ad omnia tibi occurrit deus idem: percutiens sed et sanans. mortificans sed et uiuificans, humilians sed et mans, condens mala sed et pacem faciens, ut etiam et hic respondeam haereticis. \'ecce\', enim inquiunt, ipse se conditorem profitetur malorum dicens: ego sum qui condo mala\'. amplexi enim uocabuli communionem duas malorum species in ambiguitate turbantem, quia mala dicuntur et delicta et supplicia, passim uolunt eum conditorem intellegi malorum, ut et malitiae auctor renuntietur. nos autem adhibita distinctione utriusque formae, separatis malis delicti et malis supplicii, malis culpae et malis poenae, suum cuique parti definimus auctorem, malorum quidem peccati et culpae diabolum, malorum uero supplicii et poenae deum creatorem, ut illa pars malitiae deputetur ista iustitiae, mala condentis iudicii aduersus mala delicti. de his ergo creator profitetur malis quae congruunt iudici. quae quidem illis mala sunt, quibus rependuntur. ceterum suo nomine bona, qua iusta et bonorum defensoria et delictorum inimica atque in hoc ordine deo digna. aut proba ea iniusta, ut probes malitiae deputanda, id est iniustitiae mala, quia si iustitiae erunt, iam mala non erunt, sed bona, malis tantummodo mala, quibus etiam directo bona pro malis damnantur. constitue igitur iniuste hominem diuinae legis uoluntarium contemptorem id retulisse, quod noluit caruisse, iniuste malitiam aeui illius imbribus, dehinc et ignibus caesam, iniuste Aegyptum foedissimam; superstitiosam, amplius hospitis populi conflictatricem, decemplici castigatione percussam. indurat cor Pharaonis, sed meruerat in exitium subministrari qui iam negauerat deum, qui iam legatos eius totiens superbus excusserat, qui iam populo laborem operis adiecerat: postremo, qua Aegyptius, olim deo reus fuerat gentilis idolatriae, ibim et corcodrillum citius colens quam deum uiuum. impendit et ipsum populum, sed ingratum. inmisit et pueris ursos, sed inreuerentibus in prophetam. uindicanda erat procacitas aetatis uerecundiam debentis.