more decidedly, especially by comparison with the other Gospels, though it occurs with similar reference to the Incarnation in the later Pauline Epistles. [Greek:  ’Elthein en sarki] is again rightly classed as a Johannean phrase, though the exact counterpart is found rather in the Epistles than the Gospel.  The doctrine of pre-existence is certainly taught in such passages as the application of the text, ‘Let us make man in our image,’ which is said to have been addressed to the Son ‘from the foundation of the world’ (c. v).  Generally I think it may be said that the doctrine of the Incarnation, the typology, and the use of the Old Testament prophecies, approximate, most distinctly to the Johannean type, though under the latter heads there is of course much debased exaggeration.  The soteriology we might be perhaps tempted to connect rather on the one hand with the Epistle to the Hebrews, and on the other with those of St. Paul.  There may be something of an echo of the fourth Gospel in the allusion—­to the unbelief and carnalised religion of the Jews.  But the whole question of the speculative affinities of a writing like this requires subtle and delicate handling, and should be rather a subject for special treatment than an episode in an enquiry like the present.  The opinion of Dr. Keim must be of weight, but on the whole I think it will be safest and fairest to say that, while the round assertion that the author of the Epistle was ignorant of our Gospel is not justified, the positive evidence that he made use of it is not sufficiently clear to be pressed controversially.

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A similar condition of things may be predicated of the Shepherd of Hermas, though with a more decided leaning to the negative side.  Here again Dr. Keim [Endnote 273:1], as well as Canon Westcott [Endnote 273:2], thinks that we can trace an acquaintance with the Gospel, but the indications are too general and uncertain to be relied upon.  The imagery of the shepherd and the flock, as perhaps of the tower and the gate, may, be as well taken from the scenes of the Roman Campagna as from any previous writing.  The keeping of the commandments is a commonplace of Christianity, not to say of religion.  And the Divine immanence in the soul is conceived rather in the spirit of the elder Gospels than of the fourth.

There is a nearer approach perhaps in the identification of ’the gate’ with the ‘Son of God,’ and in the explanation with which it is accompanied.  ’The rock is old because the Son of God is older than the whole of His creation; so that He was assessor to His Father in the creation of the world; the gate is new, because He was made manifest at the consummation of the last days, and they who are to be saved enter by it into the kingdom of God’ (Sim. ix. 12).  Here too we have the doctrine of pre-existence; and considering the juxtaposition of these three points, the pre-existence, the gate (which is the only access to the Lord), the identification of the gate with the incarnation of Jesus, we may say perhaps a possible reference to the fourth Gospel; probable it might be somewhat too much to call it.  We must leave the reader to form his own estimate.