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.

(3.) I pass over other literary arguments which hardly admit of
this form of expression--such as the improbability that the
Preface or Prologue was not part of the original Gospel, but a
later accretion; or, again, from Marcion's treatment of the
Synoptic matter in the third Gospel, both points which might be
otherwise worth dilating upon. I pass over these, and come at
o