Again, Justin Martyr speaks of our Lord having promised 'to clothe us with garments made ready for us if we keep his commandments'--[Greek: kai aionion basileian pronoesai]--whatever those words may precisely mean. These and other peculiarities in Justin may be explained if we suppose him to have been quoting from memory. The evangelical text might not as yet have acquired its verbal sanctity; and as a native of Palestine he might well have been acquainted with other traditions which lay outside the written word. The silence as to names, however, remains unexplained; and as the facts actually stand there is the same kind of proof, and no more, that Justin Martyr was acquainted with St. Matthew and St. Luke as there is that one of these evangelists made extracts from the other, or both from St. Mark. So long as one set of commentators decline to recognise the truth of this relation between the Gospels, there will be others who with as much justice will dispute the relation of Justin to them. He too might have used another Gospel, which, though like them, was not identical with them. After Justin Martyr's death, about the year 170, appeared Tatian's 'Diatessaron,' a work which, as its title implies, was a harmony of four Gospels, and most likely of _the_ four; yet again not exactly as we have them. Tatian's harmony, like so many others of the early evangelical histories, was silent on the miraculous birth, and commenced only with the public ministration. The text was in other places different, so much so that Theodoret accuses Tatian of having mutilated the Gospels; but of this Theodoret had probably no better means of judging than we have. The 'Diatessaron' has been long lost, and the name is the only clue to its composition. Of far more importance than either Justin or Tatian are such writings as remain of the immediate successors of the apostles--Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, and Ignatius: it is asserted confidently that in these there are quotations from the Gospels so exact that they cannot be mistaken. We will examine them one by one.