The whole world lay, according to Marcion, under the dispensation of the Demiurge, and therefore under a mixed government of good and evil. To the Jewish nation this Demiurge revealed himself. His revelation was stern, uncompromising, imperfect. Then the highest God, the God of love and mercy, who stood opposed to the inferior God, the Creator, the God of justice and severity, sent Jesus Christ for the salvation of all (ad salutem omnium gentium) to overthrow and destroy (arguere, redarguere, ἐλέγχειν, καταλεύειν) “the Law and the Prophets,” the revelation of the world‐God, the God of the Jews. The highest God, whose realm and law were spiritual, had been an unknown God (deus ignotus) till Christ came to reveal Him. The God of this world and of the Jews had a carnal realm, and a law which was also carnal. They formed an antithesis, and true Christianity consisted in emancipation from the carnal law. The created world under the Demiurge was bad; matter was evil; spirit alone was pure. Thus the chain unrolled, and lapsed into Manichaeism. Cerdo and Marcion stood in the same relation to Manes that Paul stood in to them. Manichaeism was not yet developed; it was developing. Gnosticism, with easy impartiality, affected Ebionitism on one side and Marcionism on the other, intensifying their opposition. It was like oxygen combining here to form an alkali, there to generate an acid. The God of love, according to Marcion, does not punish. His dealings with man are, all benevolence, communication of free grace, bestowal of ready forgiveness. For if sin be merely violation of the law of the God of this world, it is indifferent to the highest God, who is above the Demiurge, and regards not his vexatious restrictions on the liberty of man. Yet Marcion was not charged by his warmest antagonists with immorality. They could not deny that the Marcionites entirely differed from other Pauline Antinomians in their moral conduct—that, for example, in their abhorrence of heathen games and pastimes they came fully up to the standard of the most rigid Catholic Christians. While many of the disciples of St. Paul, who held that an accommodation with prevailing errors was allowable, that no importance was to be attached to externals, found no difficulty in evading the obligation to become martyrs, the Marcionites readily, fearlessly, underwent the interrogations of the judges and the tortures of the executioner.(398) Marcion, there is no doubt, regarded St. Paul as the only genuine apostle, the only one who remained true to his high calling. He taught that Christ, after revealing himself in his divine power to the God of this world, and confounding him unto submission, manifested himself to St. Paul,(399) and commissioned him to preach the gospel.