Tertullian — Against Marcion 4.4
So the rope of contention must be drawn with equal strain fluctuating this way and that: I say mine is true, Marcion his; I affirm Marcion’s adulterated, Marcion mine. Who will decide between us except the reckoning of time, prescribing authority to what is found older and prejudging corruption on what is convicted later?
For insofar as the false is a corruption of the true, truth must necessarily precede the false; the thing will be prior to the passion, and the matter to the rivalry. Otherwise how absurd that if we prove ours older and Marcion’s later, ours should seem false before it had truth as material, and Marcion’s be believed to have experienced rivalry from ours before even being published—and finally that what is later be thought truer, after so many already published works and documents of the Christian religion, which could not have been issued without the gospel’s truth, that is before the gospel’s truth.
As for Luke’s gospel meanwhile, so far as its share between us and Marcion debates truth: what is according to us is so much older than Marcion’s that Marcion himself once believed it, when in first heat of catholic faith he even contributed money to the church—soon cast out with himself after he defected into his heresy from our truth.
What now if Marcionites deny his first faith among us against his own letter too? What if they do not even acknowledge the letter? Certainly they not only confess Marcion’s Antitheses but even prefer them. From these proof suffices for me: if that gospel which is referred to Luke among us is itself what Marcion through his Antitheses argues was interpolated by Judaism’s protectors toward incorporating law and prophets—so as to fashion Christ from them—he certainly could not have argued against what he had not found; nobody reprehends future things he does not know will be; emendation does not precede the fault.
So Marcion alone and first turns up as emender of a gospel overturned from Tiberian to Antonine times—awaited so long by Christ, already repenting that he had hurried to send apostles without Marcion’s guard!—except that heresy is a business of human temerity, not divine authority, which always ‘emends’ gospels while it corrupts them; disciple is not above master, and even if an angel Marcion, he is sooner to be called anathema than an evangelist who evangelized otherwise; so while he emends he confirms both: ours earlier, by emending what he found, and his later, by constituting his own new from the emendation of ours.
Latin
funis ergo ducendus est contentionis pari hinc inde nisu fluctuante: ego meum dico uerum, Marcion suum; ego Marcionis adfirmo adulteratum, Marcion meum. quis inter nos determinabit, nisi temporis ratio, ei praescribens auctoritatem. quod antiquius repperietur, et ei praeiudicans uitiationem, quod posterius reuincetur? in quantum enim falsum corruptio est ueri, in tantum praecedat necesse est ueritas falsum. prior erit res passione et materia aemulatione. alioquin quam absurdum, ut, si nostrum antiquius probauerimus, Marcionis uero posterius, et nostrum ante uideatur falsum quam habuerit de ueritate materiam, et Marcionis ante credatur aemulationem a nostro expertum quam et editum et postremo id uerius existimetur, quod est serius, post tot ac tanta iam opera atque documenta Christianae religionis saeculo edita, quae edi utique non potuissent sine euangelii ueritate, id est ante euangelii ueritatem. quod ergo pertinet ad euangelium interim Lucae, quatenus communio eius inter nos et Marcionem de ueritate disceptat, adeo antiquius Marcionis est quod est secundum nos, ut et ipse illi Marcion aliquando crediderit, cum et pecuniam in primo calore fidei catholicae ecclesiae contulit, proiectam mox cum ipso, posteaquam in haeresim suam a nostra ueritate desciit. quid nunc, si negauerint Marcionitae primam apud nos fidem eius aduersus epistolam quoque ipsius? quid, si nec epistolam agnouerint? certe \'Antithesis\' non modo fatentur Marcionis sed et praeferunt. ex his mihi probatio sufficit. si enim id euangelium, quod Lucae refertur penes nos, — uiderimus an et penes Marcionem — ipsum est, quod Marcion per Antithesis suas arguit ut interpolatum a protectoribus ludaismi ad concorporationem legis et prophetarum, quo etiam Christum inde confingerent, utique non potuisset arguere nisi quod inuenerat. nemo post futura reprehendit, quae ignorat futura. emendatio culpam non antecedit. emendator sane euangelii a Tiberianis usque ad Antoniniana tempora euersi Marcion solus et primus obuenit, expectatus tamdiu a Christo, paenitente iam, quod apostolos praemisisse properasset sine praesidio Marcionis. nisi quod humanae temeritatis, non diuinae auctoritatis negotium est haeresis, quae sic semper emendat euangelia, dum uitiat, cum, et si discipulus Marcion, non tamen super magistrum, et si apostolus Marcion, siue ego, inquit Paulus, siue illi, sic praedicamus, et si prophetes Marcion, et spiritus prophetarum prophetis erunt subditi; non enim euersionis sunt, sed pacis, etiam si angelus Marcion, citius anathema dicendus quam euangelizator qui aliter euangelizauit. itaque dum emendat, utrumque confirmat: et nostrum anterius, id emendans quod inuenit, et id posterius, quod de nostri emendatione constituens suum et nouum fecit.