Against Marcion 4.37

The house of Zacchaeus too obtains salvation. By what merit? Had he too believed that Christ had come from Marcion's (god)? But the voice of that blind man was still in everyone's ears — “Have mercy on me, Jesus, son of David” — and “All the people gave praise to God,” not Marcion's God, but David's. Indeed, Zacchaeus, even though a foreigner, yet perhaps breathed upon by some knowledge of the Scriptures from his dealings with the Jews — though it is more if he did so without even knowing Isaiah — had fulfilled his commands: “Break your bread,” he says, “for the hungry, and bring those who have no roof into your house” — this he was doing at that very moment, feeding the Lord whom he had received into his house — “and if you see the naked, cover him”; this he was promising at that very moment, offering half his substance for all works of mercy, loosing the bonds of oppressive contracts, letting the harassed go free, and tearing up every unjust bond, by saying: “And if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore it fourfold.” So the Lord says: “Today salvation has come to this house.” He testified that what the Creator's prophet had commanded brings salvation. And when he says, “For the Son of Man has come to save what was lost,” I no longer argue that he came to save what was lost of the one to whom it had belonged and from whom what he came to save had been lost, but I move on to the next step of another question. There is no doubt that it concerns man. Since man consists of two substances, body and soul, we must ask in which kind of substance he seems to have been lost. If in the body, then the body had been lost, not the soul. What had been lost the Son of Man saves: so the flesh too has salvation. If he had been lost in the soul, the soul's perdition is destined for salvation, and the flesh, which was not lost, is safe. If the whole man had been lost in both substances, the whole man must necessarily be saved, and the opinion of the heretics who deny the salvation of the flesh is struck down. And now the Creator's Christ is confirmed too, who, in keeping with the Creator, promised the salvation of the whole man.

The parable too of the servants who are judged according to their account of their lord's money put out at interest shows (your) god to be a judge even on the side of severity, not only loading with more but also taking away what someone seems to have had. Or if this too depicts the Creator, (austere, taking what he did not lay down and reaping what he did not sow,) here too it is he who instructs me, whose money he teaches me to put out at interest.