“I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ, lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making.  As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them.  Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated.  For in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the Universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water.  For Christ also said, ’Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.’  Now, that it is impossible for those who have once been born to enter into their mothers’ wombs, is manifest to all.” (Apol.  I. ch. lxi.)

Now, taking into consideration the fact that St. John is the only writer who sets forth our Lord as connecting a birth with water [except a man be born of water and of the Spirit]; that when our Lord does this it is (according to St. John, and St. John only) following upon the assertion that he must be born again, and that St. John alone puts into the mouth of the objector the impossibility of a natural birth taking place twice, which Justin notices; taking these things into account, it does seem to me the most monstrous hardihood to deny that Justin was reproducing St. John’s account.

To urge trifling differences is absurd, for Justin, if he desired to make himself understood, could not have quoted the passage verbatim, or anything like it.  For, if he had, he must have prefaced it with some account of the interview with Nicodemus, and he would have to have referred to another Gospel to show that our Lord alluded to baptism; for, though our Lord mentions water, He does not here categorically mention baptism.  So, consequently, Justin would have to have said, “If you refer to one of our Memoirs you will find certain words which lay down the necessity of being born again, and seem to connect this birth in some way with water, and if you look into another Memoir you will see how this can be, for you will find a direction to baptize with water in the name of the Godhead, and if you put these two passages together you will be able to understand something of the nature of our dedication, and of the way in which it is to be performed, and of the blessing which we have reason to expect in it if we repent of our sins.”

Well, instead of such an absurd and indirect way of proceeding, which presupposes that Antoninus Pius was well acquainted with the Diatessaron, he simply reproduces the substance of the doctrine of St. John, and interweaves with it the words of institution as found in St. Matthew.  I shall afterwards advert to the hypothesis that this account was taken from an apocryphal Gospel.