If any one of the primitive Christian writers was likely to have been acquainted with the authentic writings of the evangelists, that one was indisputably Justin Martyr. Born in Palestine in the year 89, Justin Martyr lived to the age of seventy-six; he travelled over the Roman world as a missionary; and intellectually he was more than on a level with most educated Oriental Christians. He was the first distinctly controversial writer which the Church produced; and the great facts of the Gospel history were obviously as well known to him as they are to ourselves. There are no traces in his writings of an acquaintance with anything peculiar either to St. John or St. Mark; but there are extracts in abundance often identical with and generally nearly resembling passages in St. Matthew and St. Luke. Thus at first sight it would be difficult to doubt that with these two Gospels at least he was intimately familiar. And yet in all his citations there is this peculiarity, that Justin Martyr never speaks of either of the evangelists by name; he quotes or seems to quote invariably from something which he calls [Greek: apomnemoneumata ton Apostolon], or 'Memoirs of the Apostles.' It is no usual habit of his to describe his authorities vaguely: when he quotes the Apocalypse he names St. John; when he refers to a prophet he specifies Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Daniel. Why, unless there was some particular reason for it, should he use so singular an expression whenever he alludes to the sacred history of the New Testament? why, if he knew the names of the evangelists, did he never mention them even by accident? Nor is this the only singularity in Justin Martyr's quotations. There are those slight differences between them and the text of the Gospels which appear between the Gospels themselves. When we compare an extract in Justin with the parallel passage in St. Matthew, we find often that it differs from St. Matthew just as St. Matthew differs from St. Luke, or both from St. Mark--great verbal similarity--many paragraphs agreeing word for word--and then other paragraphs where there is an alteration of expression, tense, order, or arrangement. Again, just as in the midst of the general resemblance between the Synoptical Gospels, each evangelist has something of his own which is not to be found in the others, so in these 'Memoirs of the Apostles' there are facts unknown to either of the evangelists. In the account extracted by Justin from 'the Memoirs,' of the baptism in the Jordan, the words heard from heaven are not as St. Matthew gives them--'Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased'--but the words of the psalm, 'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee;' a reading which, singularly enough, was to be found in the Gospel of the Ebionites. Another curious addition to the same scene is in the words [Greek: kai pur anephthe en Iordane], 'and a fire was kindled in Jordan.'