the founder of the sect of the Marcionites, is generally held to have been the son of the Bishop of Sinope, and to have been born in that city about the beginning of the second century. He is said by Tertullian to have been a shipmaster, and Rhodon calls him a seaman. Possessed of an earnest and independent mind, he probably arrived at a belief in Christianity without any human aid, an opinion that is supported by the inference which he makes to "the first glow of his faith." After thus receiving the Scriptures, Marcion proceeded in the same bold yet sincere spirit to interpret them. Startled by the seeming dissimilarity between God as manifested in Christ, and God as revealed in nature, he jumped at once to the conclusion that they are two distinct and irreconcilable beings, the one good and loving, the other inexorable and cruel. This doctrine once adopted, he immediately reduced to practice, by neglecting the body as the work of the latter, and by stringently obeying the gospel as the sole emanation from the former, by becoming a severe ascetic, and by presenting a great part of his estate to the church. As he proceeded in his speculations he saw the same contrariety between the Jehovah of the Old Testament, whose characteristic appeared to be jealousy, and the God of the New Testament, whose essence is love. A like antagonism he seemed to discover between the Messiah of the Jews, the destined heir of a large worldly kingdom, and Jesus, the poverty-stricken man of sorrow. Thus he was gradually led to reject the Old Testament as directly contradictory to the New, and as intended for the Jews only, and not for the whole of mankind. This heresy was very probably the cause of his excommunication from the church at Sinope. Marcion then repaired to Rome, in the hope that his new doctrine would awaken some sympathy in the church of that city, but there also he was rejected as a heretic. Discommodated so severely by all professing Christians, he now began to consider himself the sole representative of primitive Christianity. Accordingly, he set himself to arrange his opinions into a system that might be received into the minds of men, and in this task he was assisted by a Gnostic teacher named Cerdo. He displayed remarkable zeal in making converts to his opinions, and with apostolic spirit he journeyed frequently abroad, glorying to endure privation, malice, and contempt, and loving to address his proselytes as "follow-sufferers of hate and hardship." Yet Marcion still cherished a sympathy and respect for many of his former friends, a circumstance that may have partly originated the prevalent opinion that he desired in his later years to be re-admitted into the church. He is said by Irenaeus to have met the venerable Polycarp at Rome, and to have asked him if he remembered him. "Yes," was the reply, "I remember thee, the first-born of Satan." The date of Marcion's death is unknown.

The following is an outline of the creed of the Marcionites in its later and more developed form. They assumed that there were three original principles—(1.) The good, perfect, and holy God; (2.) the evil Matter; and, (3.) the Demiurge, a being of finite power and imperfect goodness, who is sometimes, but improperly, styled God. Between the two last principles there is a natural and never-ending conflict for the mastery. It began by the Demiurge laying hold upon a part of matter and forming out of it the world and all its inhabitants. Into the human creature—his masterpiece—he infused a soul, moulded out of his own essence, after his own image, and bounded his conduct by a law which he might not transgress on pain of punishment. But man, thus formed of two antagonistic elements, was tossed to and fro by their conflicting influences, until he was driven beyond the boundary which his Maker had set up, and was consigned to the dominion of matter, and the evil which it necessarily entails. The Demiurge then selected the Jews to be his representatives on the earth, gave them a ceremonial and a moral law, promised happiness as a reward of their obedience, and threatened perdition as a punishment of their disobedience. He also foretold a Messiah, who should conduct the Jews to the height of earthly felicity, and spurn the heathen into the depth of misery and ruin. At this crisis the good God, who had hitherto sat remote in a holy inactivity, interfered to thwart the unjust designs of the Demiurge. Deeming it cruel that men should be punished for an imperfection that is innate, and therefore insurmountable, he sent into the world his son, Christ (a man in semblance, but not in reality), with an offer of divine life and blessedness to all who should merely trust in him. This message of love, so directly opposed to the message of justice that had hitherto been proclaimed, incited the Demiurge to crucify the Divine Messenger, and to attempt to bind him in hell. To this apparent defeat the Son of God submitted, for no other purpose than to free the souls of the dead who were held under punishment by the Demiurge. Accordingly, he clad himself in his native omnipotence, released all the Gentiles in the place of torment, ascended in triumph along with them to his Father's heaven, and thus crushed and confounded the tyranny of his enemy. Thither all who believe in his name will follow, but all who reject his gospel will be left to the judgment of the Demiurge.

From this system of doctrine there necessarily arose a system of morals different in many respects from those of other Gnostics. The Marcionites held that, in purifying the heart and regulating the conduct, the law was powerless, but the gospel effective. They gloried in suffering martyrdom, and they refused to baptise all those who would not resist the power of matter by leading a life of asceticism, and refraining from marriage.

Marcion considered St Paul the only genuine teacher of Christianity. Accordingly, he rejected all the books of the New Testament except the works of that apostle. He acknowledged also a pretended original gospel, which was nothing else than a mutilated copy of St Luke. Marcion wrote a work entitled Antithesis, in which he quoted the apparent contradictions between the Old and the New Testament. (See Neander's Church History, vol. ii., p. 129, Bohn, 1850.)