misstatements, and is turbid with pious abuse. Tertullian was a master of this style, and the vehement vituperation with which he opens(1) and often interlards his work against "the impious and sacrilegious Marcion" offers anything but a guarantee of fair and legitimate criticism. Epiphanius was, if possible, still more passionate and exaggerated in his representations against him.(2) Undue importance must not, therefore, be attributed to their statements.(3)
Not only should there be caution exercised in receiving the representations of one side in a religious discussion, but more particularly is such caution necessary in the case of Tertullian, whose trustworthiness is very far from being above suspicion, and whose inaccuracy is often apparent.(4) "Son christianisme," says Reuss, "est ardent, sincere, profondément ancré dans son âme. L'on voit qu'il en vit. Mais ce christianisme est âpre, insolent, brutal, ferrailleur. II est sans onction et sans charité, quelquefois merae sans loyauté, des qu'il se trouve en face d'une opposition quelconque. C'est un soldat qui ne sait que se battre et qui oublie, tout en se battant, qu'il faut aussi respecter son ennemi. Dialecticien subtil et rusé, il excelle h, ridiculiser ses adversaires. L'injure, le sarcasme, un langage qui rappelle parfois en vérité le genre de Rabelais, une effronterie d'affirmation dans les moments de faiblesse qui frise et atteint meme la mauvaise foi, voila ses armes. Je sais ce qu'il faut en cela mettre surde compte de l'époque.... Si, au second siècle,
tous les partis, sauf quelques gnostiques, sont intolerants, Tertullian Test plus que tout le monde."(1)
The charge of mutilating and interpolating the Gospel of Luke is first brought against Marcion by Irenæus,(2) and it is repeated with still greater vehemence and fulness by Tertullian,(3) and Epiphanius;(4) but the mere assertion by Fathers at the end of the second and in the third centuries, that a Gospel different from their own was one of the Canonical Gospels falsified and mutilated, can have no weight whatever in itself in the inquiry as to the real nature of that work.(5) Their arbitrary assumption of exclusive originality and priority for the four Gospels of the Church led them, without any attempt at argument, to treat every other evangelical work as an offshoot or falsification of these. The arguments by which Tertullian endeavours to establish that the Gospels of Luke and the other Canonical Evangelists were more ancient than that of Marcion(6) show that he had no idea of historical or critical evidence.(7) We are, however, driven back upon such actual data regarding the text and contents of Marcion's Gospel as are given by the Fathers, as the only basis, in the absence of the Gospel itself, upon which any hypothesis as to its real character can be built. The question therefore is: Are these data sufficiently ample and trustworthy for a decisive judgment