we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making. As many as
are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and
undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and
to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that
are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by
us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in
which we were ourselves regenerated. For in the name of God, the
Father and Lord of the Universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ,
and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water.
For Christ also said, 'Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven.' Now, that it is impossible for those
who have once been born to enter into their mothers' wombs, is
manifest to all." (Apol. I. ch. lxi.)

Now, taking into consideration the fact that St. John is the only writer
who sets forth our Lord as connecting a birth with water [except a man
be born of water and of the Spirit]; that when our Lord does this it is
(according to St. John, and St. John only) following upon the assertion
that he must be born again, and that St. John alone puts into the mouth
of the objector the impossibility of a natural birth taking place twice,
which Justin notices; taking these things into account, it does seem to
me the most monstrous hardihood to deny that Justin was reproducing St.
John's account.

To urge trifling differences is absurd, for Justin, if he desired to
make himself understood, could not have quoted the passage verbatim, or
anything like it. For, if he had, he must have prefaced it with some
account of the interview with Nicodemus, and he would have to have
referred to another Gospel to show that our Lord alluded to baptism;
for, though our Lord mentions water, He does not here categorically