Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] It would be another matter if, so far as Marcion is concerned, the sacrament of the Christian religion began only with his own discipleship under Luke. But if it ran its course well before that too, then it certainly had authentic equipment of its own, by means of which it reached all the way down to Luke — and by whose testimony, standing behind him, Luke too can be admitted. [2] But Marcion, having got hold of Paul's letter to the Galatians — a letter that even rebukes the apostles themselves for not walking with a straight foot toward the truth of the gospel, and at the same time accuses certain pseudo-apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ — strains every nerve to demolish the standing of those gospels which are published as their own, under the name of the apostles, or even of apostolic men, so that he may transfer to his own the credit he strips from theirs. [3] But even granting that Peter and John and James, who were reputed pillars, were reproved, the reason is plain: out of regard for persons they seemed to vary in their table-fellowship. And yet, since Paul made himself, of his own accord, everything by turns to every sort of person, so as to gain the lot of them, it was quite possible for Peter too to have had it in mind to act somewhat otherwise than he taught. [4] Likewise, if pseudo-apostles too had crept in, their character has also been published: men championing circumcision and Jewish observances. So it is clear that Paul was marking them out not for their preaching but for their conduct — and he would just as readily have marked them out for any error concerning God the Creator or his Christ. Distinctions, then, must be drawn one by one. If Marcion complains that the apostles are to be held suspect of hypocrisy and dissembling to the point of corrupting the gospel, then he is already accusing Christ, by accusing those Christ chose. But if the apostles delivered the gospel whole and entire, reproved only for an inconsistency of table-fellowship, while it was the pseudo-apostles who interpolated their truth — and it is from these that our copies are drawn — then what will that genuine instrument of the apostles turn out to be, the one that suffered corrupters, the one that gave Paul his light, and through him Luke? Or if it has been so utterly wiped out — as though by some flood, blotted out by an inundation of forgers — then Marcion too, by that reckoning, no longer has the true one. [5] Or if the true one is that of the apostles — the one Marcion alone possesses (and how then does it agree with ours, which is credited not to the apostles but to Luke?) — or if what Marcion uses need not straightaway be assigned to Luke, simply because it agrees with ours — corrupted, that is, even as to its title, but belonging to the apostles nonetheless — then by the same token ours too, which agrees with his, equally belongs to the apostles, only corrupted as to its title as well.
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