This was the more to their credit that they were by no means at one in matters of belief. In a passage quoted in a former chapter, Tertullian says that the Marcionites thought it fair to do what Marcion had done, that is, to innovate on the faith according to their own pleasure. This is a rhetorical way of putting it; for the successors of Marcion seem to have differed among themselves mainly upon one point, which was, in fact, the number of “principles” which lay at the beginning of things[750]. Thanks to his Stoical training, Marcion was forced to assign a large part in the formation of the cosmos to Matter, which he nevertheless thought to be essentially evil. But in that case, how did it come into existence? It surely could not be the creation of the Supreme and benevolent Being whose name was Love; and if not, how did it come to exist independently of Him? To these questions it is possible that the essentially practical genius of Marcion saw no need to return any answer, and was content to regard them, like Epicurus before him, as insoluble problems. But his followers apparently refused to do so; and hence there arose considerable diversity of opinion. According to an Armenian author of late date, Marcion himself taught that there were _three_ principles, that is, the Supreme God, the Demiurge or Creator, and Matter, which he regarded as a sort of spouse to the Demiurge[751]. This, however, is extremely unlikely in view of the unanimous assertion of the Fathers nearer to him in point of time that he taught the existence of two principles only; and it is probable that the theory of three principles, if seriously advanced, must have been the work of one of his followers. Tertullian, whose sophistry in combating Marcion’s teaching in this respect is here particularly apparent, points out, indeed, that if the Creator be held to be self-originated and not himself the creature of the Supreme God, there must be nine gods instead of two[752]; but there is no reason to suppose that Marcion ever troubled himself about such dialectical subtleties.