We will now look at his testimony to Mark. "Mark," he tells us, "having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered, though he did not arrange in order the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard and not to put anything fictitious into the statements." This description likewise shows that our actual second Gospel could not, in its present form, have been the work of the Mark referred to. Mark or Marcus was an extremely common name in the early Christian period. In the first place, our Gospel is no more like a man's preaching than it is like an epic poem. It has, moreover, no Petrine characteristics. Mark does not give the important passage about Christ's church being built upon Peter (Matt, xvi., 18); nor the distinguishing addition "called Peter," in the calling of Simon; nor the narrative of Peter's miraculous draught of fishes; of his walking on the sea; his being sent to prepare the Passover, or the reproachful look of Jesus when Peter denied him. It also omits the expression "bitterly" when the cock crew, and Peter wept. These omissions have been attributed to Peter's excessive modesty. Apart from the absence of any evidence of this trait in the Apostle whom Paul withstood to his face because he was to be blamed, it must have been a peculiar kind of modesty indeed to omit important passages and events lest the chief Apostle should seem too prominent, and to suppress the bitterness of his penitence! But Irenæus tells us the Gospel of Mark was written after Peter's death, while Clement of Alexandria makes out that he wrote it at the request of friends which, when Peter knew, he neither hindered nor encouraged. So from these accounts, neither of which accord with Papias, it would appear that Mark had no motive for lessening the prominence of Peter. Peter is alleged to have died about the year 60; so that, Papias dying about the year 165, and writing late in life, his evidence on behalf of Mark's Gospel would be about 100 years after it is alleged to have been written. This applies with equal force to Matthew. But so marvellous are the contents of these Gospels that even the most certain evidence of their existence 100 years later would be very unsatisfactory.