But what is far more conclusive of the originality of Marcion’s Gospel is, that his Gospel was without several passages which occur in St. Luke, and which do apparently favour his views. Such are Luke xi. 51, xiii. 30 and 34, xx. 9‐16. These contain strong denunciations of the Jews by Jesus Christ, and a positive declaration that they had fallen from their place as the elect people. Marcion insisted on the abrogation of the Old Covenant; it was a fundamental point in his system; he would consequently have found in these passages powerful arguments in favour of his thesis. He certainly would not have excluded them from his Gospel, had he tampered with the text, as Irenaeus and Tertullian declare. Yet Marcion would not scruple to use the knife upon a Gospel that came into his hands, if he found in it passages that wholly upset his doctrine of the Demiurge and of asceticism. For when the Church was full of Gospels, and none were as yet settled authoritatively as canonical, private opinion might, unrebuked, choose one Gospel and reject the others, or subject any Gospel to critical supervision. The manner in which the Gospels were composed laid them open to criticism. Any Church might hesitate to accept a saying of our Lord, and incorporate it with the Gospel with which it was acquainted, till satisfied that the saying was a genuine, apostolic tradition. And how was a Church to be satisfied? By internal evidence of genuineness, when the apostles themselves had passed away. Consequently, each Church was obliged to exert its critical faculty in the composition of its Gospel. And that the churches did exert their judgment freely is evidenced by the mass of apocryphal matter which remains, the dross after the refining, piled up in the Gospels of Nicodemus, of the Infancy of Thomas, and of Joseph the Carpenter. All of which was deliberately rejected as resting on no apostolic authority, as not found in any Church to be read at the sacred mysteries, but as mere folk‐tales buzzed about, nowhere producing credentials of authenticity.