But, besides this, Dr. Schmiedel assumes the negative results of an inquiry, which he has conducted very lightly, and the scale on which he was writing compelled him to conduct lightly, into the bearings of the literature older than 140. I am not so sure as he is that there is no allusion to the Gospel in Barnabas or Hermas, where it is found (e. g.) by Keim, or in the Elders of Papias, where it is found (e. g.) by Harnack. The questions raised in these cases are too complex and too delicate to be quite worth discussing from the point of view of that legal proof which for Schmiedel seems alone to have any value. But Ignatius and the _Didaché_ are of more tangible importance. I am inclined to think that justice has rarely been done from this point of view to Ignatius. It is not so much a question of close coincidence in expression. There I should perhaps allow that Dr. Schmiedel is within his rights in denying what Dr. Drummond and Dr. Stanton affirm. The evidence of Ignatius is obscured by the fact that, unlike Polycarp[74], he is not given to exact quotation. Polycarp is by far the weaker man; it is natural to him to express his thoughts in the words of others. But Ignatius has a rugged strength of mind which digests and assimilates all that comes to it, and if it reproduces the thoughts of others, does so in a form of its own[75]. But I do not think there can be any doubt that Ignatius has digested and assimilated to an extraordinary degree the teaching that we associate with the name of St. John. If any one questions this, I would refer him to the excellent monograph, _Ignatius von Antiochien als Christ und Theologe_, by Freiherr von der Goltz (_Texte und Untersuchungen_, Band xii). It will be best to give the conclusion to which this writer comes in his own words, as I agree with it largely but not quite entirely. He says: