Hence

cion's evidence to be valuable, why do they adopt one part and neglect the other? Why do they not likewise fairly tell us to what extent we must proceed, if we regulate our Canon of Scripture by his rule? There is no doubt of his having disavowed every Gospel but his own, of his having received no other part of the New Testament except certain Epistles of St. Paul garbled, and of his having rejected altogether the writings of the Old Testament.* surely some little perplexity must arise, when we attempt to reconcile the canon of the Marcionites and the Ebionites, (whose assistance in purifying the Gospel of St. Matthew must not be forgotten,) without sacrificing the credit of either. The Ebionites rejected only a part of the Old Testament, retaining the greatest portion of the Pentateuch at least the Marcionites rejected the whole. The Marcionites received almost all St. Paul's Epistles; the Ebionites held that Apostle and his writings in abhorBoth indeed agreed in repudiating every Gospel. except their own; but unfortunately their respective Gospels were widely different from each other. Reduced to this lamentable dilemma, can we act with greater wisdom than to abandon both Ebionites and Marcionites; to prefer simplicity to fraud, and consistency to contradiction?

rence.

But, waving every other consideration, let us examine a little some of the internal pretensions of Marcion's Gospel to legitimacy. Among the extravagant opinions imputed to him, were the following: that the Creator of the invisible world was a Deity distinct from, and superior to, the Creator of the visible world; the former being goodness itself, the latter good and evil; the latter God of the Old, the former the God of the New Testament the Jesus was the Son of the Supreme Deity, assuming that appearance of manhood when he first descended from heaven, and was seen in Capernaum, a city of Galilee ;

*Lardner, Ibid,

and that a principle part of his mission was to destroy the Law and the Prophets, or the revelation of that inferior God, who created only the visible world. Hence Marcion found it convenient to get rid of every allusion to our Saviour's nativity, because he objected to believe that Jesus was man, certainly not upon the Unitarian principle, of objecting to believe that he was more than man; and thus we find his Gospel commencing precisely where we might have expected it to commence.

A favourite text with the Marcionites was, Luke viii. 21. in which our Saviour says, "My mother and my brethren are those who hear the Word of God, and do it ;" because they considered it as proving that Christ, owned no mortal consanguinity: but the 19th verse stood directly in their way, "Then came to him his mother and his brethren, and could not come at him for the press ;" the words therefore, his mother and his brethren, they expunged. If it be said, might not the same words have been wanting in the genuine copies of St. Luke? the answer is obvious: they certainly might have been; but what proof is there that they were? Are they omitted in any of the three hundred and fifty-five manuscripts which have been collated, or in any of the versions? Not in one. And do they not seem necessary to the connexion of the subsequent verse, in which it is observed, "And it was told him by certain, which said, Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee?" Besides, we perceive these very expressions in the genuine Gospel of St. Matthew, (c. xii. 46.) where the same transaction is recorded. Could they have been inserted there by the hand of some wicked Ebionite? This however the Unitarians cannot consistently allow; because, in their judgment, the Ebionites were no interpolators. Must we not then conclude, when, as in this instance, an omission is pleaded in the Gospel which occurs not in another, which also destroys the connexion of the context, and which the

party defending it has an interest in supporting, that the theological pruning-hook has been indisputably at work?

Again our Saviour addresses his heavenly Father as "Lord of Heaven and Earth," Luke x. 11; an appellation which completely militated against the creed of Marcion, who distinguished between the Lord of heaven, (that is, the heaven of heavens,) or the Lord of the invisible world, and the Lord of the earth, or the Lord of the terrestrial and visible world. We therefore find, that in his Gospel the latter part of the appellation was suppressed, our Saviour being introduced as only using the terms, "Lord of heaven." But since precisely the same expressions, "Lord of heaven and earth," are read in St. Matthew, (c. xi. 25.) and since Marcion, as we have seen, had private reasons for the omission, we cannot surely hesitate in determining which is the genuine text.

The greatest liberty however seems to have been taken with those passages which tend to confirm the authority of the Old Testament. Hence were omitted, in the eleventh chapter of St. Luke, the verses 30, 31, and 32, which alluded to Jonah, to the Queen of the South, to Solomon and to Nineveh; and the verses 49, 50, 51, which speak of the blood of the prophets, and of Able and Zacharias: in the nineteenth chapter, the verses 45, 46, in which our Saviour expels the money-changers from the Temple: in the twentieth chapter, the verses 17, 18, in which occurs a quotation from the Psalms; and the verses 37, 38, where an allusion is made to the divine vision exhibited in the bush to Moses in the twenty-first chapter, the verses 21, 22, which recognize a prophecy of Daniel and in the twenty-second chapter, the verses 35, 36, and 37, in the last of which a prophecy of Isaiah is represented as about to be accomplished. Now every one of these texts, omitted, by Marcion, are to be found in the corresponding passages both of St. Matthew and of St. Mark, except the two first and the last, the former of which however

are in St. Matthew, and the latter is in St. Mark. And it should be observed, that these are* the principle texts of St. Luke, in which the Old Testament is quoted with distinct approbation. There are indeed two passages of this description, which were not erased; viz. Luke xiii. 28. and Luke xxiv. 25. but these were ingeniously accommodated to the doctrine of the Marcionites. In the first it is said, "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out." Here, instead of "when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob and the prophets, in the kingdom of God." Marcion read, "when ye shall see all the just in the kingdom of God." In the second passage, our Sa

* Perhaps if to those, which are mentioned above, we add Luke xviii. 31, 32, 33, we may say all; and these likewise were omitted by Marcion, as the first of them asserted, that “All things which are written by the Prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished." Indeed a similar declaration is made, Luke xxiv. 44, 45, 46; but I very much doubt whether Marcion's Gospel had any thing in common with St. Luke after the preceding verse, for the following reasons: Epiphanius states, that it was defective at the end as well as at the beginning, Hæres. 42. §. 11; and that he had proceeded regularly to the end in his refutations of every part in which Marcion had absurdly retained any expression of our Saviour hostile to his own doctrine : έτως έως τέλος διεξήλθον, ἐν οἷς φαίνεται ηλιθιως καθ' ἑαυτές επί ταύτας τας παραμείνασας του σε Σωτήρος και του Αποςόλου λεξεις quλar7wv.. 10. Now the last notice of this kind which he takes is contained in the 39th verse, the subject of which is concluded at the 43d verse. The result is obvious. Besides, it should not be forgotten, that in a former passage he had absolutely erased a declaration of the same nature, not indeed so fully expressed as this. Epiphanius, it is true, is in general sufficiently inaccurate; but if any dependence can be placed upon his statements, it is in the case of Marcion's Gospel and Apostolicon, which he professes to have read, and from which, for the object of refutation, he made, he says, numerous

extracts.

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viour thus addresses two of his disciples after his resurrection, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken." This he changed into "Slow of heart to believe all that I have spoken to you."*

When therefore these several circumstances are duly considered; when we perceive so many omissions, and such striking deviations in Marcion's Gospel, all pointing one way, all tending to the support of his own peculiar system; and when also we discover parallel passages in the genuine Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, sometimes in one, and sometimes in both of them, where the disputed expressions appear; must it not argue an infantine credulity almost beyond example, a credulity, which no reflection can correct, no experience cure, to conceive it probable, that the text of Marcion was the unadulterated text of St. Luke? What possible chance could have produced so great a variety of readings, and that at so early a period, all meeting in a common centre? A result so uniform never surely could have been effected by a simple combination of contingencies, but must have been fraudulently secured by the loaded die "of a systematical theology." If the opinion of Lardner on this point be important, whose History of Heretics must be allowed to be sufficiently favourable to heresy, that also will be found adverse to the Unitarian argument. "Upon an impartial review," he observes, "of these alterations, some appear to be trifling, others might arise from the various readings of different copies: but many of them are undoubtedly designed perversions, intended to countenance, or at least not directly contradict,

*It may be added, that in all the instances adduced, the Peshito, or old Syriac Version, is strictly conformable with our received Gospels, and directly against Marcion's; an argument which may perhaps be of some weight with those who justly admit that Version" to be of the most remote antiquity and of the highest authority." Introduction to the New Translation, p. 15.