Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
If matters stand this way, so that the truth is adjudged to belong to us -- all of us who walk by that rule which the churches took over from the apostles, who in turn took it from Christ, who took it from God -- then it stands settled, on the reasoning of our proposed rule, that heretics are not to be admitted to any appeal to the Scriptures, since we prove, without recourse to the Scriptures, that they have no claim on the Scriptures at all. For if they are heretics, they cannot be Christians, since they hold nothing from Christ, having taken up, by their own choosing, the name of heretics that they themselves accept. So then, as non-Christians they acquire no right whatsoever to Christian writings, and it is fair to say to them: 'Who are you? When and from where have you come? What are you doing in what is mine, when you are not mine? By what right, Marcion, do you cut down my forest? By what license, Valentinus, do you divert my springs? By what authority, Apelles, do you shift my boundary-markers? This estate is mine -- what business is it of the rest of you to sow and pasture here to suit your own pleasure? This estate is mine, I have possessed it a long time, I possessed it first, I hold firm titles from the very authors to whom the property belonged. It is the apostles' inheritance that I hold. As they provided in their will, as they entrusted to good faith, as they bound by oath, so I hold it. As for you, they always disinherited you and disowned you, as strangers, as enemies.' And on what other ground are heretics strangers and enemies to the apostles, except through that difference of doctrine which each one, by his own private judgment, has either put forward against the apostles or accepted from someone else against them?