Against Marcion 5.21

To this letter alone its brevity has been of help, so that it escaped Marcion's forging hands. I wonder, however, that, having accepted a letter written to one man, he rejected the two to Timothy and the one to Titus, composed about the order of the church. He was eager, I suppose, to tamper even with the number of the letters. Remember, reader, that we have proved from the apostle too what was treated before, and that we have dispatched here whatever had been postponed to this work; so that you should neither think the repetition here superfluous, by which we have confirmed the earlier matter, nor hold suspect the postponement there, by which we saved these things for their proper time. If you examine the whole little work, you will judge neither that there is redundancy here nor lack of confidence there.