St. Ignatius, who cites these words, excepting only those within brackets, does not say whence he drew them; but St. Jerome informs us that they were taken from the Gospel of the Hebrews. At the same time he gives the passage with greater fulness than St. Ignatius. The account in St. Matthew contains nothing at all like this; but St. Luke mentions these circumstances, though with considerable differences. The Lord having appeared in the midst of his disciples, they imagine that they see a spirit. Then he says, “Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”(223) The narrative in St. Luke’s Gospel is fuller than that in the Gospel of the Hebrews, and is not derived from it. In the Nazarene Gospel, as soon as the apostles see and touch, they believe. But in the Canonical Gospel of St. Luke, they are not convinced till they see Christ eat. Justin Martyr cites a passage now found in the Canonical Gospel of St. John, but not exactly as there, evidently therefore obtaining it from an independent source, and that source was the Gospel of the Twelve, the only one with which he was acquainted, the only one then acknowledged as Canonical in the Nazarene Church. The passage is, “_Christ has said, Except ye be regenerate, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven._”(224) In St. John’s Gospel the parallel passage is couched in the third person: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”(225) The difference stands out more clearly in the Greek than in English. We may conjecture that the primitive Gospel of the Hebrews contained an account of the interview of Nicodemus with our Lord. When we come to consider the Gospel used by the author of the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions, we shall find that the instruction on new birth made to Nicodemus was familiar to him, but not exactly in the form in which it is recorded by St. John. St. Jerome informs us that the lost Gospel we are considering did not relate that the veil of the Temple was rent in twain when Jesus gave up the ghost, but that the lintel stone, a huge stone, fell down.(226) That this tradition may be true is not unlikely. The rocks were rent, and the earth quaked, and it is probable enough that the Temple was so shaken that the great lintel stone fell. St. Epiphanius gives us another fragment: “_I am come to abolish the sacrifices: if ye cease not from sacrificing, the wrath of God will not cease from weighing upon you._”(227)