7 The calling is from the Father, but the cause of it is the Son. He it is who hath brought about reconciliation and bestowed it as a gift, for we were not saved by works in righteous- ness: or I should rather say that these blessings proceed from Both; as He says, “Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine.” (John xvii. 10.) He says not “ye are removing from the Gospel” but “from God who called you,” a more frightful expression, and more likely to affect them. Their seducers did not act abruptly but gradually, and while they removed them from the faith in fact, left names unchanged. It is the policy of Satan not to set his snares in open view; had they urged them to fall away from Christ, they would have been shunned as de- ceivers and corrupters, but suffering them so far to continue in the faith, and putting upon their error the name of the Gospel, without fear they undermined the building employing the terms which they used as a sort of curtain to conceal the destroyers themselves. As therefore they gave the name of Gospel to this their imposture, he contends against the very name, and boldly says, “unto a different Gospel,”— Ver. 7. “Which is not another Gospel.” And justly, for there is not another.19 Nevertheless the Marcionites20 are misled by this phrase, as diseased persons are injured even by healthy food, for they have seized upon it, and exclaim, “So Paul himself has declared there is no other Gospel.” For they do not allow all the Evangelists, but one only, and him mutilated and confused according to their pleasure. Their explanation of the words, “according to my Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ,” (Rom. xvi. 25.) is sufficiently ridiculous; nevertheless, for the sake of those who are easily seduced, it is necessary to refute it. We assert, therefore, that, although a thousand Gospels were written, if the contents of all were the same, they would still be one, and their unity no wise infringed by the number of writers. So, on the other hand, if there were one writer only, but he were to contradict himself, the unity of the things written would be destroyed. For the oneness of a work depends not on the number of its authors, but on the agreement or contradictoriness of its contents. Whence it is clear that the four Gospels are one Gospel; for, as the four say the same thing, its oneness is preserved by the harmony of the contents, and not impaired by the difference of persons. And Paul is not now speaking of the number but of the discrepancy of the things spoken. With justice might they lay hold of this expres- sion, if the Gospels of Matthew and Luke differed in the signification of their contents, and 19 [The Revised version brings out the difference of the words for “another.” The ἕτερον, “a different kind of” gospel, the second is ἄλλο, “another,” simply. “To a different sort of gospel,—nay, it is not another gospel. There cannot be two gospels. Only certain men are troubling you and trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But a perverted gospel is no gospel at all.”—G.A.] 20 Marcion flourished about a.d. 120–130. His doctrine was a compound of various preceding theologies, chiefly the Gnostic. He received only a part of St. Luke’s Gospel. Tertull. in Marc. iv. 2–4. He it was who on asking Polycarp to “acknowledge” him, received for answer, “I acknowledge thee as the first-born of Satan.” 18 Galatians 1:1--3