This however does not exclude the possibility that Justin may at times quote from uncanonical Gospels as well.  We have already seen reason to think that he did so from the substance of the Evangelical narrative, as it appears in his works, and this conclusion too is not otherwise than confirmed by its form.  The degree and extent of the variations incline us to introduce such an additional factor to account for them.  Either Justin has used a lost Gospel or Gospels, besides those that are still extant, or else he has used a recension of these Gospels with some slight changes of language and with some apocryphal additions.  We have seen that he has two short sayings and several minute details that are not found in our present Gospels.  A remarkable coincidence is noticed in ‘Supernatural Religion’ with the Protevangelium of James [Endnote 129:1].  As in that work so also in Justin, the explanation of the name Jesus occurs in the address of the angel to Mary, not to Joseph, ’Behold thou shalt conceive of the Holy Ghost and bear a Son and He shall be called the Son of the Highest, and thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.’  Again the Protevangelium has the phrase ‘Thou shalt conceive of His Word,’ which, though not directly quoted, appears to receive countenance from Justin.  The author adds that ’Justin’s divergences from the Protevangelium prevent our supposing that in its present form it could have been the actual source of his quotations,’ though he thinks that he had before him a still earlier work to which both the Protevangelium and the third Gospel were indebted.  So far as the Protevangelium is concerned this may very probably have been the case; but what reason there is for assuming that the same document was also anterior to the third Gospel I am not aware.  On the contrary, this very passage seems to suggest an opposite conclusion.  The quotation in Justin and the address in the Protevangelium both present a combination of narratives that are kept separate in the first and third Gospels.  But this very fact supplies a strong presumption that the version of those Gospels is the earliest.  It is unlikely that the first Evangelist, if he had found his text already existing as part of the speech of the angel to Mary, would have transferred it to an address to Joseph; and it is little less unlikely that the third Evangelist, finding the fuller version of Justin and the Protevangelium, should have omitted from it one of its most important features.  If a further link is necessary to connect Justin with the Protevangelium, that link comes into the chain after our Gospels and not before.  Dr. Hilgenfeld has also noticed the phrase [Greek:  charan de labousa Mariam] as common to Justin and the Protevangelium [Endnote 130:1].  This, too, may belong to the older original of the latter work.  The other verbal coincidences with the Gospel according to the Hebrews in the account of the Baptism, and with that of Thomas in the ’ploughs and yokes,’ have been already mentioned, and are, I believe, along with those just discussed, all that can be directly referred to an apocryphal source.