21, 22 (the same), and the frequent allusions to the Old Testament Scriptures, seem to have been expunged as recognising or belonging to the kingdom of the Demiurge [Endnote 220:1].  Again, the changes in xiii. 28, xvi. 17, xx. 35, are fully in accordance with Marcion’s system [Endnote 220:2].  The reading which Marcion had in xi. 22 is expressly stated to have been common to the Gnostic heretics generally.  In some of these instances the dogmatic motive is gross and palpable, in most it seems to have been made out, but some (such as especially xiii. 1-9) are still doubtful, and the method of excision does not appear to have been carried out with complete consistency.

This, indeed, was only to be expected.  We are constantly reminded that Tertullian, a man, with all his faults, of enormous literary and general power, did not possess the critical faculty, and no more was that faculty likely to be found in Marcion.  It is an anachronism to suppose that he would sit down to his work with that regularity of method and with that subtle appreciation of the affinities of dogma which characterise the modern critic.  The Septuagint translators betray an evident desire to soften down the anthropomorphism of the Hebrew; but how easy would it be to convict them of inconsistency, and to show that they left standing expressions as strong as any that they changed!  If we judge Marcion’s procedure by a standard suited to the age in which he lived, our wonder will be, not that he has shown so little, but so much, consistency and insight.

I think, therefore, that the dogmatic argument, so far as it goes, tells distinctly in favour of the ‘mutilation’ hypothesis.  But at the same time it should not be pressed too far.  I should be tempted to say that the almost exclusive and certainly excessive use of arguments derived from the history of dogma was the prime fallacy which lies at the root of the Tuebingen criticism.  How can it be thought that an Englishman, or a German, trained under and surrounded by the circumstances of the nineteenth century, should be able to thread all the mazes in the mind of a Gnostic or an Ebionite in the second?  It is difficult enough for us to lay down a law for the actions of our own immediate neighbours and friends; how much more difficult to ‘cast the shell of habit,’ and place ourselves at the point of view of a civilisation and world of thought wholly different from our own, so as not only to explain its apparent aberrations, but to be able to say, positively, ’this must have been so,’ ‘that must have been otherwise.’  Yet such is the strange and extravagant supposition that we are assumed to make.  No doubt the argument from dogma has its place in criticism; but, on the whole, the literary argument is safer, more removed from the influence of subjective impressions, more capable of being cast into a really scientific form.