It is to be remembered that Marcion's Gospel was known to be an heretical production: one of the many creations of the Gnostic age,--it must have been universally execrated and abhorred by faithful men.

Besides this lacerated text of St.Luke's Gospel, there was an Ebionite recension of St.Matthew: a Cerinthian exhibition of St.Mark: a Valentinian perversion of St.John.And we are but insisting that the effect of so many corruptions of the Truth, industriously propagated within far less than 100 years of the date of the inspired verities themselves, must needs have made itself sensibly felt.

Add the notorious fact, that in the second and third centuries after the Christian era the text of the Gospels is found to have been grossly corrupted even in orthodox quarters,--and that traces of these gross corruptions are discoverable in certain circles to the present hour,--and it seems impossible not to connect the two phenomena together.

The wonder rather is that, at the end of so many centuries, we are able distinctly to recognize any evidence whatever.
The proneness of these early Heretics severally to adopt one of the four Gospels for their own, explains why there is no consistency observable in the corruptions they introduced into the text.

It also explains the bringing into one Gospel of things which of right clearly belong to another--as in St.Mark iii.