Against Marcion 4.3

It is another matter if, according to Marcion, the mystery of the Christian religion began with Luke's discipleship. But if it runs back earlier, it certainly had an authentic apparatus through which it reached Luke, with whose testimony standing by, Luke too could be admitted. But Marcion, having come upon Paul's letter to the Galatians, in which he rebukes even the apostles themselves for not walking with a straight foot according to the truth of the gospel, and at the same time accuses certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ, strives to destroy the standing of those gospels which are published as their own and under the name of apostles, or of apostolic men too, in order, that is, to confer on his own the credit which he takes from them. Now even if Peter and John and James, who were reputed to be pillars, were rebuked, the reason is plain: they seemed to vary their company out of regard for persons. And yet, since Paul himself became all things to all men in order to win all, Peter too could have had this in view in acting somewhat otherwise than he taught. Likewise, if false apostles had also crept in, their character too is stated: they insisted on circumcision and Jewish pride. So they were censured by Paul not for their preaching but for their conduct, and he would equally have censured them if they had erred at all about God the Creator or his Christ. Each point, then, must be distinguished. If Marcion complains that the apostles are held suspect of collusion and pretense to the point of corrupting the gospel, he is now accusing Christ, by accusing those whom Christ chose. But if the apostles did hand on the gospel whole, and were rebuked only for inconsistency in their company, while the false apostles tampered with their truth, and our gospels were compiled from that source, what will that genuine instrument of the apostles be that did not suffer adulterers? What was it that enlightened Paul, and through him Luke? But if it was so utterly destroyed as to be blotted out by a sort of deluge, a flood of forgers, then Marcion does not have the true one either. Or if what Marcion alone has will be the true one, that is, the apostles', how does it agree with ours, which is ascribed not to the apostles but to Luke? Or if what Marcion uses is not to be assigned straightaway to Luke because it agrees with ours (ours being adulterated, as he says, in its title as well), but is the apostles', then ours too, which agrees with it, is equally the apostles', though adulterated in its title too.