That the apostles had received a “secret doctrine” from Jesus, and that he himself taught one, is evident from the following words of Jerome, who confessed it in an unguarded moment. Writing to the Bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, he complains that “a difficult work is enjoined, since this translation has been commanded me by your Felicities, which _St. Matthew himself, the Apostle and Evangelist_, DID NOT WISH TO BE OPENLY WRITTEN. For if it had not been SECRET, he (Matthew) would have added to the _evangel_ that which he gave forth was his; but he made up this book sealed up in the Hebrew characters, which he put forth _even in such a way_ that the book, written in Hebrew letters and _by the hand of himself_, might be possessed _by the men most religious_, who also, in the course of time, received it from those who preceded them. But this very book they never gave to any one to be transcribed, and its _text_ they related some one way and some another.”[311] And he adds further on the same page: “And it happened that this book, having been published by a disciple of Manichæus, named Seleucus, who also wrote falsely _The Acts of the Apostles_, exhibited matter not for edification, but for destruction; and that this book was approved in a synod which the ears of the Church properly refused to listen to.”[312] He admits, himself, that the book which he authenticates as being written “_by the hand of Matthew_;” a book which, notwithstanding that he translated it twice, was nearly unintelligible to him, for it was arcane or _a secret_. Nevertheless, Jerome coolly sets down every commentary upon it, except his own, as _heretical_. More than that, Jerome knew that this _original Gospel of Matthew_ was the expounder of the only true doctrine of Christ; and that it was the work of an evangelist who had been the friend and companion of Jesus. He knew that if of the two _Gospels_, the Hebrew in question and the Greek belonging to our present Scripture, one was spurious, hence heretical, it was not that of the Nazarenes; and yet, knowing all this, Jerome becomes more zealous than ever in his persecutions of the “Hæretics.” Why? Because to accept it was equivalent to reading the death-sentence of the established Church. The _Gospel according to the Hebrews_ was but too well known to have been the only one accepted for four centuries by the Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. And neither of the latter accepted the _divinity_ of Christ. If the commentaries of Jerome on the Prophets, his famous _Vulgate_, and numerous polemical treatises are all as trustworthy as this version of the _Gospel according to Matthew_, then we have a divine revelation indeed.