point by Dr Foakes-Jackson in his Hulsean Lectures. But this is a case of revival rather than of descent, and a reformer who has to wait some eighteen centuries before his ideas meet with acceptance, may well be held to have failed to influence after ages. Notwithstanding this, the heresy of Marcion will always have great interest for the student of the History of Religions. The success—fugitive as such things go, but real enough for a time—with which Marcion set up a Church over against that tremendous polity which has been called without much exaggeration “the very master-piece of human wisdom,” would be alone sufficient to make it precious in the eyes of those who are not blind to the romance of history. To archaeologists it is the more interesting that it is only in its direction that we are likely to receive in future much additional light upon the struggles of nascent Christianity with one category of its competitors. The very voluminous writings of the other Gnostics were destroyed by the triumphant Church with such minute care that the Coptic texts described in the last chapter form the only relics of this once enormous literature that have survived to us. The heathen religions which for some time disputed the ground with the Church have also left few traces partly for the same reason, and partly because the secrecy to which they pledged their votaries made it unlikely that many written documents of these faiths would survive. But the _Antitheses_ of Marcion were in the hands of Photius in the Xth century; and, although it is dangerous to prophesy in such matters, it is by no means impossible that some lucky discovery within the borders of the Turkish Empire may yet give us a MS. that will enable us to reconstruct them. If that should ever be the case, we shall be in a far better position than we are now to decide whether the analogies between Marcionism and Protestantism that have been detected of late years are essential or superficial. Footnote 685: Chap. IX. p. 118 _supra_. Footnote 686: Renan, _Marc Aurèle_, p. 49. Cf. Dill, _Nero to Marcus_, pp. 473-477. Footnote 687: Renan, _L’Église Chrétienne_, pp. 31-33, and Hadrian’s letter there quoted. Footnote 688: Of the defences mentioned in the text the Apology of Quadratus is the only one still lost to us. Justin Martyr’s two Apologies are among the best known of patristic works. That of Aristides was found by Dr Rendel Harris in a Syriac MS. in 1889. For the identification of this by Dean Armitage Robinson with the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, see _Cambridge Texts and Studies_, vol. 1. No. 1. Footnote 689: The account of Marcion’s life given by Salmon (_s.v._ Marcion) in the _Dict. Christian Biog._ is here mostly followed. Abundant references to the Fathers and other sources are there given. Footnote 690: