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 Heretics, ch. 38: "For
though Valentinus seems to use the entire instrument, he has
done violence to the truth with a more artful mind than
Marcion." "The entire instrument"--Latin, _integro
instrumento_--includes our four canonical gospels. Clement of
Alexandria and Hippolytus have preserved quotations from
Valentinus in which he refers to the gospels of Matthew, Luke,
and John. See Westcott, Canon of the New Testament, 4. 5.
Respecting the gospel of John in particular, Irenaeus says,
Against Heresies, 3. 11, that "the Valentinians make the most
abundant use of it." Heracleon, whom Origen represents as having
been a familiar friend of Valentinus, wrote a commentary on
John, from which Origen frequently quotes; but if Valentinus and
his followers, in the second quarter of the second century, used
"the entire instrument," they must have found its apostolic
authority established upon a firm foundation before their day.
This carries us back to the age immediately succeeding that of
the apostles, when Polycarp and others who had known them
personally