A passage is quoted from Canon Westcott, in which it is stated that while Tertullian and Epiphanius accuse Marcion of altering the text of the books which he received, so far as his treatment of the Epistles is concerned this is not borne out by the facts, out of seven readings noticed by Epiphanius two only being unsupported by other authority.

The life of Irenaeus overlapped that of Marcion considerably, and there seems to have been somewhat frequent communication between the Church at Lyons, where he was first presbyter and afterwards bishop, and that of Rome, where Marcion was settled; but Irenaeus [Endnote 206:1], as well as Tertullian and Epiphanius, alludes to the mutilation of St. Luke's Gospel by Marcion as a notorious fact.

We may, then, reconstruct the Gospel used by Marcion with very considerable confidence that we have its real contents before us.

In other words, the verified peculiarities of St. Luke's style and diction (and how marked many of these are will have been seen from the examples above) are found in the portions of the Gospel omitted by Marcion in a proportion averaging considerably more than one to each verse!

In the fourth book of the treatise against Marcion Tertullian begins by dealing with the Antitheses (a sort of criticism by Marcion on what he regarded as the Judaising portions of the Canonical Gospel), and then, in general terms, with the actual Gospel which Marcion used.

We may thus tabulate the relation of Marcion to these various authorities.