Tertullian — Against Marcion 4.3
It is another matter if with Marcion the sacrament of Christian religion began from Luke’s discipleship. But if it also ran before, it certainly had an authentic preparation through which it reached as far as Luke, with whose testimony standing by Luke too can be admitted.
But Marcion, having gotten Paul’s letter to the Galatians—also jabbing the apostles themselves as not walking with straight foot toward the gospel’s truth, and at once also accusing certain false apostles as perverting Christ’s gospel—strains to destroy the standing of those gospels which are published as their own under the apostles’ names or even the apostolics’, so as of course to confer on his own the faith he strips from them.
Further, even if Peter and John and James, who were thought pillars, were rebuked, the cause is plain: for with respect of persons they seemed to vary their table-companionship. And yet since Paul himself became all things to all that he might gain all, this too could have been in Peter’s counsel—to do something otherwise than he taught. Likewise if false apostles also crept in, their quality too is published: claiming circumcision and Jewish pride. So far were they marked by Paul not about preaching but about conduct—he who would equally have marked them if they had erred about God the Creator or his Christ.
Therefore singles must be distinguished. If Marcion complains apostles are held suspect of prevarication and simulation even unto the gospel’s depravation, he already accuses Christ by accusing those Christ chose. But if the apostles indeed conferred an intact gospel, rebuked only about inequality of table-companionship, while false apostles interpolated their truth and thence ours are digested—what will that genuine instrument of the apostles be that did not suffer adulterers, which illuminated Paul and from him Luke?
But if it was so thoroughly deleted that, as by some cataclysm, it was obliterated by a flood of falsifiers, then already neither does Marcion have the true. Or if that itself will be the true—that is the apostles’—which Marcion alone has, how does what is referred not to the apostles but to Luke agree with ours? Or if what Marcion uses is not at once to be reckoned Luke’s because it agrees with ours—namely adulterated even around the title—yet is the apostles’, then already ours too, which agrees with that, is equally the apostles’. But adulterated also about the title.
Latin
Aliud est, si penes Marcionem a discipulatu Lucae coepit religionis Christianae sacramentum. ceterum si et retro decucurrit, habuit utique authenticam paraturam, per quam ad Lucam usque peruenit, cuius testimonio adsistente Lucas quoque possit admitti. sed enim Marcion nactus epistolam Pauli ad Galatas, etiam ipsos apostolos suggillantis ut non recto pede incedentes ad ueritatem euangelii, simul et accusantis pseudoapostolos quosdam peruertentes euangelium Christi, conititur ad destruendum statum eorum euangeliorum, quae propria et sub apostolorum nomine eduntur uel etiam apostolicorum, ut scilicet fidem, quam illis adimit, suo conferat. porro etsi reprehensus est Petrus et Iohannes et Iacobus, qui existimabantur columnae, manifesta causa est: personarum enim respectu uidebantur uariare conuictum. et tamen cum ipse Paulus omnibus omnia fieret, ut omnes lucraretur, potuit et Petro hoc in consilio fuisse aliquid aliter agendi quam docebat. proinde si et pseudoapostoli inrepserant, horum quoque qualitas edita est, circumcisionem uindicantium et Iudaicos fastus. adeo non de praedicatione, sed de conuersatione a Paulo denotabantur, aeque denotaturo, si quid de deo creatore aut Christo eius errassent. igitur distinguenda erunt singula. si apostolos praeuaricationis et simulationis suspectos Marcion haberi queritur usque ad euangelii deprauationem, Christum iam accusat, accusando quos Christus elegit. si uero apostoli quidem integrum euangelium contulerunt, de sola conuictus inaequalitate reprehensi, pseudoapostoli autem ueritatem eorum interpolauerunt et inde sunt nostra digesta, quod erit germanum illud apostolorum instrumentum, quod adulteros (non) passum est? quod Paulum inluminauit et ab eo Lucam? at si tam funditus deletum est, ut cataclysmo quodam ita inundatione falsariorum obliteratum, iam ergo nec Marcion habet uerum. aut si ipsum erit uerum, id est apostolorum, quod Marcion habet solus, id quomodo nostro consonat, quod non apostolorum. sed Lucae refertur? aut si non statim Lucae deputandum est quo Marcion utitur, quia nostro consonat, scilicet adulterato etiam circa titulum, ceterum apostolorum est, iam ergo et nostrum, quod illi consonat, aeque apostolorum est. sed adulteratum de titulo quoque.\'