"But could a work which was held in great consideration in Justin's and Tertullian's time and down to the commencement of the fourth century, and which strenuously insists that the Emperor Maximin caused other blasphemous Acts of Pilate to be published and zealously circulated, manifestly for the purpose of displacing and discrediting the older Christian Acts--could such a work suddenly change its whole form, and from the fifth century, to which in so extraordinary a manner translators, wholly different in character, point back with such wonderful concurrence, continue in the new form? Contrary as this is to all historical criticism, there is in the contents of the work, in the singular manner in which isolated and independent details are shown to be related to the canonical books, no less than in the accordance with the earliest quotations found in Justin and Tertullian, a guaranty of the greatest antiquity. "There are in the contents, also, matters of such a nature that we must confess that they are to be traced back to the primitive edition, as, for example the narrative in the first chapter of the bringing forward of the accused. "It is incorrect, moreover, to draw a conclusion from Justin's designation of the Acta which is not warranted by the whole character of the work. The Acta, the _[Greek: hypomnêmata]_, are specified in Justin's account not less than in the manuscripts which we possess, as being written _under_ Pontius Pilate, and that can signify nothing else than that they were an official production composed under the direct sanction of the Roman governor. Their transmission to the emperor must be imagined as accompanied by a letter of the same character with that which has been brought down to us in the Greek and Latin edition, and yet not at all similar in purport to the notable Acts of Pilate."[214] THE ACTS OF PILATE (_First Greek Form_) I, Ananias, of the proprætor's bodyguard, being learned in the law, knowing our Lord Jesus Christ from the Holy Scriptures, coming to Him by faith, and counted worthy of the holy baptism, searching also the memorials written at that time of what was done in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, which the Jews had laid up in the time of Pontius Pilate, found these memorials written in Hebrew, and, by the favor of God, have translated them into Greek for the information of all who call upon the name of our Master Jesus Christ, in the seventeenth year of the reign of our lord Flavius Theodosius, and the sixth of Flavius Valentianus, in the ninth indiction. All ye, therefore, who read and transfer into other books, remember me and pray for me, and pardon my sins which I have sinned against Him. Peace be to those who read and those who hear, and to their households. Amen. * * * * *