MARMON, the founder of the Marcionites, an extremely ascetic Gnostic sect, -was the son of a bishop of Sinope in Pontus. In his earlier years he was a sailor or ship-master. Being excommunicated by his father, on account of his heretical opinions, he went to Rome about 140 A.D. He made several anxious efforts to obtain a reconciliation with the Catholic church, for he does not appear to have loved schism; but his restless, pry ing, theorizing intellect constantly led him into opinions and practices too hostile to those of his fellow-Christians to permit of their being passed over in silence. After his final excommunication, he associated himself with the Syrian Gnostic Cerdon, and founded a s3-stem, in some respects, quite antagonistic to Christianity. The gospel of Christ, according to him, con.isted in free love of the good; the Mosaic system, with its motives of rewards and punishments, was mere legality; and there is as irreconcilable an opposi tion between the espective authors of the " Law" and the "Gospel," i.e. the Creator,
•on the one hand, and the God of the-Christhms, on the other, as there is b'etween these -two works. His system is but imperfectly known; and it is supposed to have assumed either time or four aboriginal beings—Good, Evil, Creator, and Matter. See GNOSTICS: Respecting the outward form of worship practiced among his followers, little is known save that it had great similarity—as had their whole religious system—to that of the Manichwans. (q.v.). Marcion entirely rejected the Old Testament; and of the New Testament all but a few epistles and the gospel of St. Luke, which had also to undergo certain changes from his hand. The first four chapters were omitted, and the fifth he beg-an with the words: "In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Cmsar, God came to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and spoke on the Sabbath." The Marcionites subsisted as a distinct party till the 6th c., and were diffused through Syria, Egypt, Palestine, etc. Tertullian and others wrote against them.