only contains Catholic doctrine (he concludes, "_Christus Jesus in Evangelio tuo mens est_" c. 43); and therefore he examines the Gospel only so far as may serve to establish his own view and refute that of Marcion. "To show," Volkmar continues, "wherein this Gospel was falsified or mutilated, _i.e._, varied from his own, on the contrary, is in no way his design, for he perceives that Marcion could retort the reproach of interpolation, and in his time proof from internal grounds was hardly possible, so that only exceptionally, where a variation seems to him remarkable, does he specially mention it."(1) On the other hand Volkmar remarks that Tertullian's Latin rendering of the text of Marcion which lay before him,--which, although certainly free and having chiefly the substance in view, is still in weightier passages verbally accurate,--directly indicates important variations in that text. He goes on to argue that the silence of Tertullian may be weighty testimony for the fact that passages which exist in Luke, but which he does not mention, were missing in Marcion's Gospel, but he does so with considerable reservation. "But his silence _alone_," he says, "can only under certain conditions represent with diplomatic certainty an omission in Marcion. It is indeed probable that he would not lightly have passed over a passage in the Gospel of Marcion which might in any way be contradictory to its system, if one altogether similar had not preceded it, all the more as he frequently drags in by force such proof passages from Marcion's text, and often plainly with but a certain sophistry tries to refute his adversary out of the words of his own Gospel. But it remains always possible that in his eagerness he has {94} overlooked much; and besides, he believes that by his replies to particular passages he has already sufficiently dealt with many others of a similar kind; indeed, avowedly, he will not willingly repeat himself. A certain conclusion, therefore, can only be deduced from the silence of Tertullian when special circumstances enter."(l) Volkmar, however, deduces with certainty from the statements of Tertullian that, whilst he wrote, he had not before him the Gospel of Luke, but intentionally laid it aside, and merely referred to the Marcionitish text, and further that, like all the Fathers of the third Century, he preferred the Gospel according to Matthew to the other Synoptics, and was well acquainted with it alone, so that in speaking of the Gospel generally he only has in his memory the sense, and the sense alone of Luke except in so far as it agrees or seems to agree with Matthew.(2)