Colossians 1:21

I am accustomed in my prescription against all heresies, to fix my compendious criterion (of truth) in the testimony of time ; claiming priority therein as our rule, and alleging lateness to be the characteristic of every heresy. This shall now be proved even by the apostle, when he says: “For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel; which is come unto you, as it is unto all the world.” For if, even at that time, the tradition of the gospel had spread everywhere, how much more now! Now, if it is our gospel which has spread everywhere, rather than any heretical gospel, much less Marcion’s, which only dates from the reign of Antoninus, then ours will be the gospel of the apostles. But should Marcion’s gospel succeed in filling the whole world, it would not even in that case be entitled to the character of apostolic. …

The apostle indeed teaches, in his Epistle to the Colossians, that we were once dead, alienated, and enemies to the Lord in our minds, whilst we were living in wicked works; that we were then buried with Christ in baptism, and also raised again with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead. “And you, (adds he), when ye were dead in sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses.” And again: “If ye are dead with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?” Now, since he makes us spiritually dead, in such a way, however, as to allow that we shall one day have to undergo a bodily death, so, considering indeed that we have been also raised in a like spiritual sense, he equally allows that we shall further have to undergo a bo …

Having premised these remarks, let us carefully attend to the passages which he whom we are answering has produced, as if we ourselves had quoted them. “In Deuteronomy, ‘Thou shalt be perfect before the Lord thy God.’ Again, in the same book, ‘There shall be not an imperfect man among the sons of Israel.’ In like manner the Saviour says in the Gospel, Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’ So the apostle, in his second Epistle to the Corinthians, says: ‘Finally, brethren, farewell. …

Colossians i. 21, 22 “And you, being in time past, enemies and alienated in your mind, in your evil works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and without blemish and unreprovable before Him.”

See how near he is come to the thing. He saith, “In the putting” quite away, not putting off merely. “The body of sins.” He means, “the old life.” He is continually adverting to this in different ways, as he said above, “Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and reconciled us who were alienated,” that we should be “holy and without blemish.” ( Col. i. 13, 21 .) No longer, he saith, is the circumcision with the knife, but in Christ Himself; for no hand imparts this circumcision, as is the case there, but the Spirit. It circumciseth not a part, but the whole man. It is the body both in the one and the other case, but in the one it is carnally, in the other it is spiritually circumcised; but not as the Jews, for ye have not put off flesh, but sins. When and where? In Baptism. And what he calls circumcision, he again calls burial. …

27. Here we have the complete explanation of the fact that in your exposition of the faith, to deceive the ears of the ignorant, you nine times make mention of the body, and not even once of the flesh, and all the while men think that you confess the body of flesh, and that the flesh is identical with the body. If it is the same as the body, it means nothing different. I say this, for I know your answer: “I thought the body was the same as the flesh; I spoke with all simplicity.” Why do you not rather call it flesh to signify the body, and speak indifferently at one time of the flesh, at another of the body, that the body may be shown to consist of flesh, and the flesh to be the body. But believe me, your silence is not the silence of simplicity. For flesh is defined one way, the body another; all flesh is body, but not every body is flesh. …