for all the writings of the first two centuries,’ but he is able to admit the use of the first and third Synoptics (the publication of which he places respectively in 100 and 110 A.D.) by throwing forward the date of Clement’s Epistle, through the Judith-hypothesis, to A.D. 125.  We may however accept the assertion for what it is worth, as coming from a mind something less than impartial, while we reject the concomitant theories.  For my own part I do not feel able to speak with quite the same confidence, and yet upon the whole the evidence, which on a single instance might seem to incline the other way, does appear to favour the conclusion that Clement used our present Canonical Gospels.

2.

There is not, so far as I am aware, any reason to complain of the statement of opinion in ‘Supernatural Religion’ as to the date of the so-called Epistle of Barnabas.  Arguing then entirely from authority, we may put the terminus ad quem at about 130 A.D.  The only writer who is quoted as placing it later is Dr. Donaldson, who has perhaps altered his mind in the later edition of his work, as he now writes:  ’Most (critics) have been inclined to place it not later than the first quarter of the second century, and all the indications of a date, though very slight, point to this period’ [Endnote 71:1].

The most important issue is raised on a quotation in c. iv, ’Many are called but few chosen,’ in the Greek of the Codex Sinaiticus [Greek:  [prosechomen, maepote, hos gegraptai], polloi klaetoi, oligoi de eklektoi eurethomen.] This corresponds exactly with Matt. xxii. 14, [Greek:  polloi gar eisin klaetoi, oligoi de eklektoi].  The passage occurs twice in our present received text of St. Matthew, but in xx. 16 it is probably an interpolation.  There also occurs in 4 Ezra (2 Esdras) viii. 3 the sentence, ’Many were created but few shall be saved’ [Endnote 71:2].  Our author spends several pages in the attempt to prove that this is the original of the quotation in Barnabas and not the saying in St. Matthew.  We have the usual positiveness of statement:  ’There can be no doubt that the sense of the reading in 4 Ezra is exactly that of the Epistle.’  ’It is impossible to imagine a saying more irrelevant to its context than “Many are called but few chosen” in Matt. xx. 16,’ where it is indeed spurious, though the relevancy of it might very well be maintained.  In Matt. xxii. 14, where the saying is genuine, ’it is clear that the facts distinctly contradict the moral that “few are chosen."’ When we come to a passage with a fixed idea it is always easy to get out of it what we wish to find.  As to the relevancy or irrelevancy of the clause in Matt. xxii. 14 I shall say nothing, because it is in either case undoubtedly genuine.  But it is surely a strange paradox to maintain that the words ‘Many were created but few shall be saved’ are nearer in meaning to ‘Many are called but few chosen’ than the repetition of those very words themselves.  Our author has