chose men of bad character to be his disciples, that “he might show that he came not to call the righteous, but sinners,” is another clearly later interpolation, for it jars with the reasoning of Barnabas, and when Origen quotes the passage he omits the phrase.  In a work which “has been written at the request, and is published at the cost of the Christian Evidence Society,” and which may fairly, therefore, be taken as the opinion of learned, yet most orthodox, Christian opinion, the Rev. Mr. Sanday writes:  “The general result of our examination of the Epistle of Barnabas may, perhaps, be stated thus, that while not supplying by itself certain and conclusive proof of the use of our Gospels, still the phenomena accord better with the hypothesis of such a use.  This epistle stands in the second line of the Evidence, and as a witness is rather confirmatory than principal” ("Gospels in the Second Century,” p. 76.  Ed. 1876).  And this is all that the most modern apologetic criticism can draw from an epistle of which Paley makes a great display, saying that “if the passage remarked in this ancient writing had been found in one of St. Paul’s Epistles, it would have been esteemed by every one a high testimony to St. Matthew’s Gospel” ("Evidences,” p. 113).

CLEMENT OF ROME.—­“Tischendorf, who is ever ready to claim the slightest resemblance in language as a reference to new Testament writings, admits that although this Epistle is rich in quotations from the Old Testament, and here and there that Clement also makes use of passages from Pauline Epistles, he nowhere refers to the Gospels” ("Sup.  Rel.,” vol. i. pp. 227, 228).  The Christian Evidence Society, through Mr. Sanday, thus criticises Clement:  “Now what is the bearing of the Epistle of Clement upon the question of the currency and authority of the Synoptic Gospels?  There are two passages of some length which are, without doubt, evangelical quotations, though whether they are derived from the Canonical Gospels or not may be doubted” ("Gospels in the Second Century,” page 61).  After balancing the arguments for and against the first of these passages, Mr. Sanday concludes:  “Looking at the arguments on both sides, so far as we can give them, I incline, on the whole, to the opinion that Clement is not quoting from our Gospels; but I am quite aware of the insecure ground on which this opinion rests.  It is a nice balance of probabilities, and the element of ignorance is so large that the conclusion, whatever it is, must be purely provisional.  Anything like confident dogmatism on the subject seems to me entirely out of place.  Very much the same is to be said of the second passage” (Ibid, p. 66).

The quotations in Clement, apparently from some other evangelic work, will be noted under head h, and these are those cited in Paley.