12.  The heretical sects of the second century furnish testimony to the genuineness of our canonical gospels which is of the most weighty and decisive character.  Though some of them rejected certain books of the New Testament and mutilated others, it was on doctrinal, not on critical grounds.  Had they attempted to disprove on historic grounds the genuineness of the rejected portions of Scripture, it is certain that the church fathers, who wrote against them at such length, would have noticed their arguments.  The fact that they did not, is conclusive proof that no such attempt was made; but from the position which the leaders of these heretical sects occupied, it is certain that, could the genuineness of the canonical gospels, or any one of them, have been denied on historic grounds, the denial would have been made.

Marcion, one of the most distinguished leaders of those who separated themselves from the orthodox church, came to Rome in the second quarter of the second century.  He separated Christianity from all connection with Judaism, making the Jehovah of the Old Testament a different being from the God of the New Testament.  His gospel, called by the ancients the gospel of Marcion, is admitted to have been a mutilated copy of Luke’s gospel.  Of course it became necessary that he should reject the first two chapters of this gospel, (which alone he received,) since they contain our Lord’s genealogy in the line of Abraham and David, and should otherwise alter it to suit his views.  On the same grounds, he altered the epistles of Paul also.  That Marcion was not ignorant of the other three gospels, but rejected them, is plain from the words of Tertullian, who accuses him, Against Marcion, 4. 3, of attempting “to destroy the credit of those gospels which are properly such, and are published under the name of apostles, or also of apostolic men; that he may invest his own gospel with the confidence which he withdraws from them.”  His real ground for rejecting some books of the New Testament and mutilating others was that he could judge better of the truth than the writers themselves, whom he represented to have been misled by the influences of Jewish prejudices.  Accordingly Irenaeus well says of the liberties taken by Marcion, Against Heresies, 1. 27:  “He persuaded his disciples that he was himself more trustworthy than the apostles who have delivered to us the gospel; while he gave to them not the gospel, but a fragment of the gospel.”

A distinguished leader of the Gnostics was Valentinus, who came to Rome about A.D. 140, and continued there till the time of Anicetus.  His testimony and that of his followers is, if possible, more weighty than even that of Marcion.  His method, according to the testimony of Tertullian, was not to reject and mutilate the Scriptures, but to pervert their meaning by false interpretations.  Tertullian says, Against