Supposing, for the moment, that the author has proved the points that he sets himself to prove, to what will this amount?  He will have shown (a) that the patristic statement that Marcion mutilated St. Luke is not to be accepted at once without further question; (b) that we cannot depend with perfect accuracy upon the details of his Gospel, as reconstructed from the statements of Tertullian and Epiphanius; (c) that it is difficult to explain the whole of Marcion’s alleged omissions, on purely, dogmatic grounds—­assuming the consistency of his method.

With the exception of the first, I do not think these points are proved to any important extent; but, even if they were, it would still, I believe, be possible to show that Marcion’s Gospel was based upon our third Synoptic by arguments which hardly cross or touch them at all.

But, before we proceed further, it is well that we should have some idea as to the contents of the Marcionitic Gospel.  And here we are brought into collision with the second of the propositions just enunciated.  Are we able to reconstruct that Gospel from the materials available to us with any tolerable or sufficient approach to accuracy?  I believe no one who has gone into the question carefully would deny that we can.  Here it is necessary to define and guard our statements, so that they may cover exactly as much ground as they ought and no more.

Our author quotes largely, especially from Volkmar, to show that the evidence of Tertullian and Epiphanius is not to be relied upon.  When we refer to the chapter in which Volkmar deals with this subject [Endnote 209:1]—­a chapter which is an admirable specimen of the closeness and thoroughness of German research—­we do indeed find some such expressions, but to quote them alone would give an entirely erroneous impression of the conclusion to which the writer comes.  He does not say that the statements of Tertullian and Epiphanius are untrustworthy, simply and absolutely, but only that they need to be applied with caution on certain points.  Such a point is especially the silence of these writers as proving, or being supposed to prove, the absence of the corresponding passage in Marcion’s Gospel.  It is argued, very justly, that such an inference is sometimes precarious.  Again, in quoting longer passages, Epiphanius is in the habit of abridging or putting an &c. ([Greek:  kai ta hexaes—­ kai ta loipa]), instead of quoting the whole.  This does not give a complete guarantee for the intermediate portions, and leaves some uncertainty as to where the passage ends.  Generally it is true that the object of the Fathers is not critical but dogmatic, to refute Marcion’s system out of his own Gospel.  But when all deductions have been made on these grounds, there are still ample materials for reconstructing that Gospel with such an amount of accuracy at least as can leave no doubt as to its character.  The wonder is that we are able to do so, and that the statements of the Fathers