_Fourth._—Marcion’s Gospel (written as early as the year 145), except in intentional omissions and mutilations, for which he was sharply called to an account by Tertullian, presents a substantial agreement with Luke’s Gospel. Judge Waite claims that it was earlier than Luke’s; but the almost unanimous verdict of scholars is against him. Indeed, Professor Fisher, in the March number of the _Princeton Review_ for 1881 (p. 217), says: “That Marcion’s Gospel was an abridgment of our Luke is _now conceded on all hands_, even by the author of ‘Supernatural Religion.’ Dr. Sanday has not only demonstrated this by a linguistic argument, but has proved by a comparison of texts that the Gospel of the Canon must have been for some time in use, and have attained to a considerable circulation, before Marcion applied to it his pruning-knife. There is no reason to doubt that he took for his purpose a Gospel of established authority in the Church.” Professor Curtiss also says that “the weight of scholarship is overwhelmingly in favor of the priority of Luke.” And he quotes from the last edition of the “Supernatural Religion,” the admission referred to by Professor Fisher. Its anonymous author says that Dr. Sanday’s very able examination “has convinced us that our earlier hypothesis is untenable; that the portions of our third Synoptic, excluded from Marcion’s Gospel, were really written by the same pen which composed the mass of the work; and, consequently, that our third Synoptic existed in his time, and was substantially in the hands of Marcion.” Dr. Sanday[7] shows, as he expresses it, that Marcion’s Gospel stands to Luke’s “entirely in the relation of _defect_. We may say entirely, for the additions are so insignificant—some thirty words in all, and those for the most part supported by other authority—that for practical purposes they are not to be reckoned. With the exception of these thirty words inserted, and also some slight alterations of phrase, Marcion’s Gospel presents simply an _abridgment_ of our St. Luke.” That Marcion’s Gospel was not one of Justin’s “Memoirs,” is plain from his calling him a wolf,[7] “sent forth by the devil.” Although Marcion’s Gospel is not in existence, except as reproduced from the works of Tertullian and Epiphanius, its agreement with Luke (with the exceptions which they pointed out) becomes important evidence that Luke is to-day as it was in the year one hundred and forty-five.