pointed out the loose manner in which Hippolytus and other early writers, in dealing with different schools of heretics, indifferently quote the founder or his followers without indicating the precise person quoted. This practice is particularly apparent in the work of Hippolytus when the followers of Valentinus are in question. Tischendorf himself is obliged to admit this. He asks: "Even though it be also incontestable that the author (Hippolytus) does not always sharply distinguish between the sect and the founder of the sect, does this apply to the present case"?(1) He denies that it does in the instance to which he refers, but he admits the general fact. In the same way another apologist of the fourth Gospel (and as the use of that Gospel is maintained in consequence of a quotation in the very same chapter as we are now considering, only a few lines higher up, both the third and fourth are in the same position) is forced to admit: "The use of the Gospel of John by Valentinus cannot so certainly be proved from our refutation-writing (the work of Hippolytus). Certainly in the statement of these doctrines it gives abstracts, which contain an expression of John (x. 8), and there cannot be any doubt that this is taken from some writing of the sect. But the apologist, in his expressions regarding the Valentinian doctrines, does not seem to confine himself to one and the same work, but to have alternately made use of different writings of the school, for which reason we cannot say anything as to the age of this quotation, and from this testimony, therefore, we merely have further confirmation that the Gospel was early(2) (?) used in the 2 Why "early"? since Hippolytus writes about a.d. 225. {69} School of the Valentinians,"(1) &c. Of all this not a word from Canon Westcott, who adheres to his system of bare assertion.