Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics 37

If things stand this way—if the truth is awarded to us, who follow the rule that the Church received from the Apostles, the Apostles from Christ, Christ from God—then the logic of our position is settled: heretics must not be admitted to a contest over Scripture, because we prove, even without Scripture, that they have no claim on it. If they are heretics, they cannot be Christians; they possess nothing from Christ, having chosen to follow their own preference and taken the name 'heretic.' Not being Christians, they hold no right to Christian writings. We are therefore justified in demanding: Who are you? When and where did you come from? What are you doing on my property—property that is not yours? By what right, Marcion, do you cut down my forest? By what license, Valentine, do you divert my springs? By what authority, Apelles, do you move my boundary markers? What are the rest of you sowing and grazing here at your own pleasure? This possession is mine; I have held it for a long time. My title is firm, traced back to the very authors to whom the truth belonged. I am the heir of the Apostles. Just as they safeguarded it in their testament, entrusted it to the faith, and bound it with an oath, so I hold it. You, on the other hand, have always been disinherited and renounced—strangers, enemies. And how else could heretics be strangers and enemies to the Apostles except through a divergence in doctrine, which each one either invented or adopted on his own authority against the Apostles?