In lesser matters, Marcion’s dislike of the God of the Jews is, perhaps, more marked. Man’s body, according to him, was made by the Demiurge out of matter[719], but without any spark from a higher world infused into it, as the Ophites and Valentinus had taught. Hence man was naturally inclined to evil, and the Law which the Demiurge delivered to him was more or less of a snare. Man was sure to give way to the evil desires inherent in matter, and on doing so became with all his race subject to the power of matter and the evil spirits inhabiting it. It is true that the Demiurge had devised a plan of salvation in the shape of the Law of the Jews delivered to them on Sinai. But this concerned one small people only, and it was but a fraction of that community which could hope to observe it in all its forms and ceremonies. Did they do so, the Demiurge would provide for them a modified felicity in that region of Hades called the Bosom of Abraham[720]. For those Gentiles, and even for those Jews who from weakness or obstinacy did not obey the Law, he had prepared punishment and, apparently, eternal tortures. It is true that he promised the Jews a Messiah who should lead them to the conquest of the earth, but this leader certainly was not Jesus[721]; and it is probable that Marcion thought that His Mission had put it out of the power of the Demiurge to fulfil any of these promises. Possibly it was the same dislike of the Jews that led Marcion to consider St Paul as the only real apostle of Jesus. The others, he said, had overlaid the faith that they had received with Jewish traditions; but Paul, chosen by Jesus after His Ascension[722], had resisted their attempt to reintroduce the Law of the Jews, and was, in his own words, an apostle sent not from men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead.[723] Marcion also seems to have laid stress upon St Paul’s wonder that the Galatians were “so soon removed from Him who hath called you to His grace to another Gospel[724],” with the suggestion that this second gospel was the contrivance of the Demiurge; and generally to have accentuated the controversy between St Peter and St Paul mentioned in the Epistle bearing their name[725]. From the same Epistle to the Galatians, Marcion appears to have erased the name of Abraham where his blessing is said to have “come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ[726]”; and in like manner, to have read into the passage in the First Epistle to the Corinthians[727], where it is said that “the world by wisdom knew not God,” expressions implying that it was the “Lord of this World,” _i.e._ the Demiurge, who was ignorant of the Supreme Being[728]. As this ignorance of the Demiurge was a favourite theme of the Ophites and other Gnostics, it is possible that Marcion was more indebted to these predecessors of his than modern commentators on his teaching are inclined to allow; but he perhaps justified his reading by tacking it on