The Epistle of Barnabas is found in the original Greek at the end of the Codex Sinaiticus, and confessedly belongs to the early years of the second century. In the fourth chapter occur the following words, "Let us take care that we be not found as it is written, Many are called, but few are 'chosen." The formula here employed, as it is written, was, as Tischendorf maintained, " that by which expressions out of scripture are distinguished from all others, and marked out as the word of God written. To the suggestion of Volkmar, that the citation is not really from the Gospel of Matthew, but from 4 Esdras 8. 3, the Leipsic critic has furnished an effective reply. Dr. Davidson, in his work on the canon, does here but really echo Volkmar.
PAPIAS.
So far the New Testament " was a collection of facts„ and not a collection of books, of the spirit and not of the letter." As late as A.D. 140 we find a certain Papist. saying, " I did not consider things out of the books to be of so much good to me as things from a living and abiding voice." (Euseb. Eccl. History 3. 39.)