When Marcion came from Pontus to Rome (144 A.D.,) he brought with him a Scripture-collection consisting of ten Pauline epistles. With true critical instinct he did not include those addressed to Timothy and Titus, as also the epistle to the Hebrews. The gospel of Marcion was Luke’s in an altered state. From this and other facts we conclude that external parties were the first who carried out the idea of collecting Christian writings, and of putting them either beside or over against the sacred books of the Old Testament, in support of their systems. As to Basilides (125 A.D.), his supposed quotations from the New Testament in Hippolytus are too precarious to be trusted.(141) Testimonies to the “acknowledged” books of the New Testament as Scripture have been transferred from his followers to himself; so that his early witness to the canon breaks down. It is inferred from statements in Origen and Jerome that he had a gospel of his own somewhat like St. Luke’s, but extra-canonical. His son Isidore and succeeding disciples used Matthew’s gospel. Jerome says that Marcion and Basilides denied the Pauline authorship of the epistle to the Hebrews and the pastoral ones.(142) It is also doubtful whether Valentinus’s (140-166 A.D.) alleged citations from the New Testament can be relied upon. The passages of this kind ascribed to him by the fathers belong in a great measure to his disciples. The fragment of a letter preserved by Clement of Alexandria in the second book of the Stromata, has been thought to contain references to the gospels of Matthew and Luke; but the fact is doubtful. Nor has Henrici proved that Valentinus used John’s gospel.(143) But his followers, including Ptolemy (180 A.D.) and Heracleon (185-200 A.D.), quote the Gospels and other portions of the New Testament.(144) From Hippolytus’s account of the Ophites, Peratæ, and Sethians, we infer that the Christian writings were much employed by them. They rarely cite an apocryphal work. More than one hundred and sixty citations from the New Testament have been gathered out of their writings.(145) We may admit that these Ophites and Peratæ were of early origin, the former being the oldest known of the Gnostic parties; but there is no proof that the acquaintance with the New Testament which Hippolytus attributes to them belongs to the first rather than the second half of the second century. The early existence of the sect does not show an early citation of the Christian books by it, especially of John’s gospel; unless its primary were its last stage. Later and earlier Ophites are not distinguished in the _Philosophumena_. Hence there is a presumption that the author had the former in view, which is favored by no mention of them occurring in the “Adversus omnes Hæreses” usually appended to Tertullian’s _Præscriptiones Hæreticorum_, and by Irenæus’s derivation of their heresy from that of Valentinus. The latter father does not even speak of the Peratæ. Clement