In the year 140 A.D.Marcion possesses a Gospel which is already in an advanced stage of transcription--which has not only undergone those changes which in some regions the text underwent before it was translated into Latin, but has undergone other changes besides.

Some of its peculiarities are not those of the earliest form of the Latin version, but of that version in what may be called its second stage (e.g.xvi.

12).

It has also affinities to another version kindred to the Latin and occupying a similar place to the Old Latin among the Churches of Syria.

These circumstances together point to an antiquity fully as great as any that an orthodox critic would claim.
It should not be thought that because such indications are indirect they are therefore any the less certain.