Such facts have constrained Mr. Sanday to admit in his work on the Gospels in the Second Century that "The author of Supernatural Religion is not without reason when he says they may be derived from other collections than our actual Gospels" (p. 87, 1876.) Canon Westcott himself in summing up the results says:-- "(1) No Evangelic reference in the Apostolic Fathers can be referred certainly to a written record. (2) It appears most probable from the form of the quotations that they were derived from oral tradition" (p. 63, 1881.) We shall see, however, that whether they went to other collections or relied upon oral traditions, their Evangelic references are never exactly the same as in our gospels. They manifestly had other sources of information. Moreover it must be borne in mind that the Christian sayings very frequently crept into the text by way of gloss. An illustration of this kind of interpolation is found in the "Epistle of Barnabas," chap, xix., p. 133, where we read, "Thou shalt not hesitate to give, nor murmur when thou givest." "_Give to everyone that asketh thee_, and thou shalt know who is the good Recompenser of the reward." But for this supposed quotation being omitted in the oldest MS., the "Codex Seaiticus," it would be considered evidence that the writer of the epistle was quoting from Luke vi., 30. In copying manuscripts there was no such strictness as in a modern printing-office, where "follow your copy" is the compositor's rule. If a transcriber at the time when our Gospels were in vogue (and be it remembered we have no manuscripts either of the Fathers or of the New Testament older than the fourth or fifth century after Jesus) saw a quotation different from the way in which he had been accustomed to see it, he would not hesitate to alter it So that many of the alleged literal quotations from our Gospels may be only emendations of the scribes who found the quotations were wrong and put them right. Dr. Donaldson, in the introduction to his Apostolical Fathers, chap, iii., p. 27, tells us how "Each transcriber, as he copied, inserted the notes of previous readers into the text, and often from his heated imagination added something himself." He also informs us (p. 28) "That we know for certain that even in the second and third centuries the letters of bishops and others were excised and interpolated in their lifetime." So pure is the stream through which our Gospels have descended!