forgotten to notice that Barnabas has used the precise word [Greek:  klaetoi] just before; indeed it is the very point on which his argument turns, ’because we are called do not let us therefore rest idly upon our oars; Israel was called to great privileges, yet they were abandoned by God as we see them; let us therefore also take heed, for, as it is written, many are called but few chosen.’  I confess I find it difficult to conceive anything more relevant, and equally so to see any special relevancy, in the vague general statement ’Many were created but few shall be saved.’

But even if it were not so, if it were really a question between similarity of context on the one hand and identity of language on the other, there ought to be no hesitation in declaring that to be the original of the quotation in which the language was identical though the context might be somewhat different.  Any one who has studied patristic quotations will know that context counts for very little indeed.  What could be more to all appearance remote from the context than the quotation in Heb. i. 7, ’Who maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flaming fire’? where the original is certainly referring to the powers of nature, and means ’who maketh the winds his messengers and a flame of fire his minister;’ with the very same sounds we have a complete inversion of the sense.  This is one of the most frequent phenomena, as our author cannot but know [Endnote 73:1].

Hilgenfeld, in his edition of the Epistle of Barnabas, repels somewhat testily the imputation of Tischendorf, who criticises him as if he supposed that the saying in St. Matthew was not directly referred to [Endnote 73:2].  This Hilgenfeld denies to be the case.  In regard to the use of the word [Greek:  gegraptai] introducing the quotation, the same writer urges reasonably enough that it cannot surprise us at a time when we learn from Justin Martyr that the Gospels were read regularly at public worship; it ought not however to be pressed too far as involving a claim to special divine inspiration, as the same word is used in the Epistle in regard to the apocryphal book of Enoch, and it is clear also from Justin that the Canon of the Gospels was not yet formed but only forming.

The clause, ‘Give to every one that asketh of thee’ [Greek:  panti to aitounti se didou], though admitted into the text of c. xix by Hilgenfeld and Weizsaecker, is wanting in the Sinaitic MS., and the comparison with Luke vi. 30 or Matt. v. 42 therefore cannot be insisted upon.

The passage ’[in order that He might show that] He came not to call the righteous but sinners’ ([Greek:  hina deixae hoti ouk aelthen kalesai dikaious alla amartolous] [Endnote 74:1]) is removed by the hypothesis of an interpolation which is supported by a precarious argument from Origen, and also by the fact that [Greek:  eis metanoian] has been added (clearly from Luke v. 32) by later hands both to the text of Barnabas and in Matt. ix. 13 [Endnote 74:2].