I will not hesitate to set down for thee, along with my interpretations, whatsoever things I have at any time learned carefully from the elders and carefully stored up in memory, guaranteeing the truth of them.
2For I took no pleasure, like the many, in those who speak much, but in those who teach the truth; nor in those who relate foreign commandments, but in those who record such as were given from the Lord to the Faith, and are derived from the Truth itself.
3If, then, anyone came who had been a follower of the elders, I questioned him closely as to the sayings of the elders: what Andrew or Peter said, or what Philip, or Thomas, or James, or John, or Matthew, or any other of the Lord's disciples; and what Aristion and the elder John, the disciples of the Lord, were saying. For I did not think that I could get so much profit from the contents of books as from the living and abiding voice.