These remarks chiefly refer to the followers of Marcion, and as we have shown, when treating of Valentinus, Irenæus is expressly writing against members of heretical sects living in his own day and not of the founders of those sects.(1) The Marcionites of the time of Irenæus no doubt deliberately rejected the Gospels, but it does, not by any means follow that Marcion himself knew anything of them. As yet we have not met with any evidence even of their existence.
The evidence of Tertullian is not a whit more valuable. In the passage usually cited, he says: "But Marcion, lighting upon the Epistle of Paul to the Gaia-tians, in which he reproaches even Apostles for not walking uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel, as well as accuses certain false Apostles of perverting the Gospel of Christ, tries with all his might to destroy the status of those Gospels which are put forth as genuine and under the name of Apostles or at least of contemporaries of the Apostles, in order, be it known, to confer upon his own the credit which he takes from them."(2) Now here again it is clear that Tertullian is simply applying, by inference, Marcion's views with regard to the preaching of the Gospel by the two parties in the Church, represented by the Apostle Paul and the "pillar" Apostles whose leaning to Jewish doctrines he condemned, to the written Gospels recognized in his day though not in Marcion's. "It is uncertain," says even Canon Westcott,
"whether Tertullian in the passage quoted speaks from a knowledge of what Marcion may have written on the subject, or simply from his own point of sight."(1) Any doubt is, however, removed on examining the context, for Tertullian proceeds to argue that if Paul censured Peter, John and James, it was for changing their company from respect of persons, and similarly, "if false apostles crept in," they betrayed their character by insisting on Jewish observances. "So that it was not on account of their preaching, but of their conversation that they were pointed out by Paul,"(2) and he goes on to argue that if Marcion thus accuses Apostles of having depraved the Gospel by their dissimulation, he accuses Christ in accusing those whom Christ selected.(3) It is palpable, therefore, that Marcion, in whatever he may have written, referred to the preaching of the Gospel, or Christianity, by Apostles who retained their Jewish prejudices in favour of circumcision and legal observances, and not to written Gospels. Tertullian merely assumes, with his usual audacity, that the Church had the four Gospels from the very first, and therefore that Marcion, who had only one Gospel, knew the others and deliberately rejected them.
CHAPTER VIII. TATIAN—DIONYSIUS OF CORINTH
From Marcion we now turn to Tatian, another so-called heretic leader. Tatian, an Assyrian by birth,(1) embraced Christianity and became a disciple of Justin Martyr(2) in Rome, sharing with him, as it seems, the persecution excited by Crescens the Cynic(3) to which Justin fell a victim. After the death of Justin, Tatian, who till then had continued thoroughly orthodox, left Rome, and joined the sect of the Encratites, of which, however, he was not the founder,(4) and became the leading exponent of their austere and ascetic doctrines.(5)
The only one of his writings which is still extant is his "Oration to the Greeks"[———]. This work was written after the death of Justin, for in it he refers to that event,(6) and it is generally dated between
a. d. 170-175. (l) Teschendorf does not assert that there is any quotation in this address taken from the Synoptic Gospels;(2) and Canon Westcott only affirms that it contains a clear reference" to "a parable recorded by St. Matthew," and he excuses the slightness of this evidence by adding: "The absence of more explicit testimony to the books of the New Testament is to be accounted for by the style of his writing, and not by his unworthy estimate of their importance."(3) This remark is without foundation, as we know nothing whatever with regard to Tatian's estimate of any such books.