John alone speaks of Christ as the _door_, but the figure is often used in _Hermas_, as, “You saw, he added, the multitude who were building the tower? I saw them, sir, I said. Those, he said, are all glorious angels, and by them accordingly is the Lord surrounded. And the gate is the Son of God. This is the one entrance to the Lord. In no other way, then, shall any one enter into him except through his Son.” (Simil. ix. 12.) John x. This book of Hermas is an allegory in which an angel, in the guise of a shepherd, gives instruction in the doctrines and duties that were held and required by the Church. It has not a single _quotation_ from either the Old or New Testament. But as Dr. Chartris in “Canonicity” (p. 137) well says: “The dignity, mission, and sufferings of God’s Son are prominent in Hermas’ teaching, and remind us of the Fourth Gospel at every turn.” The supposed quotation by Papias, Fragment 5 (found in Irenæus), “In my Father’s house are many mansions,” has been given in a previous chapter.[A] _Basilides_, according to Hippolytus, used as proof-texts the exact passages found in John i. 9 and John ii. 4. Hippolytus first records the comments of Basilides on the sentence in Genesis, _Let there be light_, and then proceeds as follows: “And this, he says, is what is said in the Gospels, ‘The true light which lighteth every man which cometh into the world.’ And that each thing, he says, has its own seasons, the Saviour is a sufficient witness when he says, ‘My hour is not yet come.’” Those who deny that these quotations[4] were by Basilides, claim that Hippolytus sometimes mixes up the opinions of the master of a school with those of his followers, and so it is not certain that Basilides used these texts. The learned author of “Canonicity,” recently published, p. 173, declares that the difficulties in the way of ascribing those quotations to any other than Basilides, are “enormous.” The reasoning of Matthew Arnold (who is quite far from being rigidly orthodox) is so conclusive that we give the substance of it: “If we take all the doubtful cases of the kind and compare them with our present case, we shall find that it is not one of them. It is not true that here where the name of Basilides has just come before, and where no mention of his son or of his disciples has intervened since, there is any such ambiguity as is found in other cases.... The author in general uses the formula, _according to them_, when he quotes from the school, and the formula, _he says_, when he gives the dicta of the Master. And in this particular case he manifestly quotes the dicta of Basilides, and no one who had not a theory to serve would ever dream of doubting it. Basilides, therefore, about the year one hundred and twenty-five of our own era, had before him the Fourth Gospel.”