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Tertullian's great work against Marcion is his most important and most carefully written polemical treatise. He revised it three times. The first book of the present revision dates from AD 207; the other books cannot be dated except conjecturally. In spite of the openly displayed hostile animus of the writer, it can be used with confidence when controlled by reference to other sources.

I, 19. Marcion's special and principal work is the separation of the law and the Gospel; and his disciples will not be able to deny that in this they have their best means by which they are initiated into, and confirmed in, this heresy. For these are Marcion's antitheses—that is, contradictory propositions; and they aim at putting the Gospel at variance with the law, that from the diversity of the statements of the two documents they may argue for a diversity of gods, also.

IV, 2. With Marcion the mystery of the Christian religion dates from the discipleship of Luke. Since, however, it was under way previously, it must have had its authentic materials by means of which it found its way down to Luke; and by aid of the testimony which it bore Luke himself becomes admissible.

IV, 3. Well, but because Marcion finds the Epistle to the Galatians by Paul, who rebukes even Apostles for “not walking uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel” [Gal. 2:14], as well as accuses certain false apostles of being perverters of the Gospel of Christ, he attempts to destroy the standing of those gospels which are published as genuine and under the names of Apostles, or of apostolic men, to secure, forsooth, for his own gospel the credit he takes away from them.