Tertullian — Against Marcion 4.40

So he knew also when he ought to suffer whose passion the law was figuring. For from all the Jews’ feasts he chose the Passover day: for into this sacrament Moses had declared, It is the Lord’s Passover. Therefore he also showed his affection: With desire I have desired to eat the Passover with you before I suffer. O destroyer of the law, who had desired even to keep the Passover! No doubt the Jewish mutton had delighted him. Or was he himself the one who, having to be led like a sheep to the victim and like a sheep before the shearer not about to open his mouth, desired to fulfill the figure of his own saving blood?

He could also have been handed over by any outsider — not to say that in this too a psalm would be struck off: He who eats bread with me has lifted his heel against me. He could also have been handed over without a price. For how much work for a traitor around one who, offending the people openly, could not have been handed over more than invaded? But this would have fitted another Christ, not the one who was fulfilling the prophecies. For it is written: Because they sold the just one. For Jeremiah also sings ahead the amount and outcome of the price later recalled by repentant Judas and given for buying the potter’s field, as Matthew’s gospel holds: And they took thirty silver pieces, the price of the valued one — or honored one — and gave them for the potter’s field. So having professed that with desire he had desired to eat the Passover as his own — for it was unworthy that God should desire something another’s — the bread taken and distributed to the disciples he made that body of his by saying This is my body, that is, the figure of my body. But there would have been no figure unless there were a body of truth. Whereas an empty thing, which is a phantasm, could not take a figure.

Or if he invented bread as body for himself because he lacked the vanity of a body, then he ought to have handed over bread for us. It would have served Marcion’s vanity that bread be crucified. But why does he call bread his body and not rather a melon, which Marcion had in place of a heart, not understanding that this was an old figure of Christ’s body saying through Jeremiah: They devised a device against me, saying, Come, let us cast wood into his bread — that is, the cross into his body? So the illuminator of ancient things declared enough what he then meant the bread to signify by calling bread his body. So also in mentioning the cup, establishing a testament sealed by his blood, he confirmed the substance of the body. For no body’s blood can exist except flesh’s. For even if some non-flesh quality of body is opposed to us, certainly it will not have blood unless it is fleshy. So the proof of body will stand from the witness of flesh, the proof of flesh from the witness of blood. And that you may also recognize the old figure of blood in wine, Isaiah will be present: Who is this who comes from Edom, the redness of his garments from Bozrah? So fair in a violent robe with strength? Why are your garments red, and your clothes as from a full, trodden winepress floor? For the prophetic spirit, as already gazing on the Lord coming to the passion, clothed of course in flesh so as to have suffered in it, marks the bloody habit of flesh in the redness of garments, of flesh trodden and pressed out by the force of passion as on a winepress floor — because from there too men come down as if bloodied from wine’s redness. Much more plainly Genesis in Judah’s blessing, from whose tribe Christ’s flesh-census was going to proceed, was already then outlining Christ in Judah: He will wash his robe in wine and his cloak in the blood of the grape — showing robe and cloak as flesh and wine as blood. So also now he consecrated his blood in wine who then figured wine into blood.