While the general atmosphere of Hell in _Barnabas_, with its “neui he giazi intollerabili,”[306] its torturing fiends, its biting serpents, its Sisyphus-labours and Tantalus-pains, its harpies, its burning filth and nameless horrors, has the same “reek” as that of Dante’s Inferno, there are passages which present an almost verbal parallel. In his description of the cries of the lost, Barnabas says: “malladirano ... il loro padre he madre he il loro chreatore.” Who can but recall Dante’s words about the dismal spirits assembled on the bank of Acheron, who— Bestemmiavano Dio e lor parenti?[307] This brings us to the subject of actual verbal coincidences, of which we must confess we have found but two, though a more systematic investigation might well yield a much larger number. Barnabas’ recurring characterisation of the idols of the heathen as “dei falsi he bugiardi”[308] is surely too remarkable to be without significance, and is enforced and supported by the occurrence of another cadence of the same canto of the _Inferno_ in the phrase “rabbiosa fame,” which in Barnabas, however, applies not to the symbolic lion of the _Divina Commedia_,[309] but to the torments of the Lost. There remains one more point to be adduced—an incidental and a somewhat subtle one which makes, not so much for a relation between Dante’s writings and the _Gospel of Barnabas_ as for a relation of contemporaneity between the two writers. The inference which it would suggest is so definite and precise, that it is only fair to remark that there are puzzlingly contradictory arguments to be drawn from the language and style of Barnabas.