{80} up matters of the law with the Gospel of Christ, and falsifying Christianity,(1) as Paul himself had protested.(9) He came to Rome about a.d. 139--142,(3) and continued teaching for some twenty years.(4) His high personal character and elevated views produced a powerful effect upon his time,(5) and, although during his own lifetime and long afterwards vehemently and with every opprobrious epithet denounced by ecclesiastical writers, his opinions were so widely adopted that in the time of Epiphanius his followers were to be found throughout the whole world.(6) Marcion is said to have recognized as his sources of Christian doctrine, besides tradition, a single Gospel and ten Epistles of Paul, which in his collection stood in the following order;--Epistle to Galatians, Corinthians (2), Romans, Thessalonians (2), Ephesians (which he had with {81} the superscription "to the Laodiceans"),(1) Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon.(2) None of the other books which now form part of the canonical New Testament were either mentioned or recognized by Marcion.(3) This is the oldest collection of Apostolic writings of which there is any trace,(4) but there was at that time no other "Holy Scripture" than the Old Testament, and no New Testament Canon had yet been imagined. Marcion neither claimed canonical authority for these writings,(5) nor did he associate with them any idea of divine inspiration.(6) We have already seen the animosity expressed by contemporaries of Marcion against the Apostle Paul. The principal interest in connection with the collection of Marcion, however, centres in his single Gospel, the nature, origin, and identity of which have long been actively and minutely discussed by learned men of all shades of opinion with very varying results. The work itself is unfortunately no longer extant, and our only knowledge of it is derived from the bitter and very inaccurate opponents of Marcion. It seems to have borne much the same analogy to our third Canonical Gospel which existed between the Gospel according to {82} the Hebrews and our first Synoptic.(1) The Fathers, whose uncritical and, in such matters, prejudiced character led them to denounce every variation from their actual texts as a mere falsification, and without argument to assume the exclusive authenticity and originality of our Gospels, which towards the beginning of the third century had acquired wide circulation in the Church, vehemently stigmatized Marcion as an audacious adulterator of the Gospel, and affirmed his evangelical work to be merely a mutilated and falsified version of the "Gospel according to Luke."(2)