principal sources of our information regarding Marcion’s Gospel are the works of his most bitter denouncers Tertullian and Epiphanius” ("Sup.  Rel.,” vol. ii., p. 88).  “At the very best, even if the hypothesis that Marcion’s Gospel was a mutilated Luke were established, Marcion affords no evidence in favour of the authenticity or trustworthy character of our third Synoptic.  His Gospel was nameless, and his followers repudiated the idea of its having been written by Luke; and regarded even as the earliest testimony for the existence of Luke’s Gospel, that testimony is not in confirmation of its genuineness and reliability, but, on the contrary, condemns it as garbled and interpolated” (Ibid, pp. 146, 147).

It is scarcely worth while to refer to the supposed evidence of the “Canon of Muratori,” since the date of this fragment is utterly unknown.  In the year 1740 Muratori published this document in a collection of Italian antiquities, stating that he had found it in the Ambrosian library at Milan, and that he believed that the MS. from which he took it had been in existence about 1000 years.  It is not known by whom the original was written, and it bears no date:  it is but a fragment, commencing:  “at which, nevertheless, he was present, and thus he placed it.  Third book of the Gospel according to Luke.”  Further on it speaks of “the fourth of the Gospels of John.”  The value of the evidence of an anonymous fragment of unknown date is simply nil.  “It is by some affirmed to be a complete treatise on the books received by the Church, from which fragments have been lost; while others consider it a mere fragment itself.  It is written in Latin, which by some is represented as most corrupt, whilst others uphold it as most correct.  The text is further rendered almost unintelligible by every possible inaccuracy of orthography and grammar, which is ascribed diversely to the transcriber, to the translator, and to both.  Indeed, such is the elastic condition of the text, resulting from errors and obscurity of every imaginable description, that, by means of ingenious conjectures, critics are able to find in it almost any sense they desire.  Considerable difference of opinion exists as to the original language of the fragment, the greater number of critics maintaining that the composition is a translation from the Greek, while others assert it to have been originally written in Latin.  Its composition is variously attributed to the Church of Africa, and to a member of the Church in Rome” ("Sup.  Rel.,” vol. ii., pp. 238, 239).  On a disputable scrap of this kind no argument can be based; there is no evidence even to show that the thing was in existence at all until Muratori published it; it is never referred to by any early writer, nor is there a scintilla of evidence that it was known to the early Church.