Doubtless light would be thrown upon the question if we only knew what was the common original of the two Synoptic texts.  How do they come to be so like and yet so different as they are?  How do they come to be so strangely broken up?  The triple synopsis, which has to do more with narrative, presents less difficulty, but the problem raised by these fragmentary parallelisms in discourse is dark and complex in the extreme; yet if it were only solved it would in all probability give us the key to a wide class of phenomena.  The differences in these extra-canonical quotations do not exceed the differences between the Synoptic Gospels themselves; yet by far the larger proportion of critics regard the resemblances in the Synoptics as due to a common written source used either by all three or by two of them.  The critics have not however, I believe, given any satisfactory explanation of the state of dispersion in which the fragments of this latter class are found.  All that can be at present done is to point out that the solution of this problem and that of such quotations as the one discussed in Clement hang together, and that while the one remains open the other must also.

Looking at the arguments on both sides, so far as we can give them, I incline on the whole to the opinion that Clement is not quoting directly from our Gospels, but I am quite aware of the insecure ground on which this opinion rests.  It is a nice balance of probabilities, and the element of ignorance is so large that the conclusion, whatever it is, must be purely provisional.  Anything like confident dogmatism on the subject seems to me entirely out of place.

Very much the same is to be said of the second passage in c. xlvi compared with Matt. xxvi. 24, xviii. 6, or Luke xvii. 1, 2.  It hardly seems necessary to give the passage in full, as this is already done in ‘Supernatural Religion,’ and it does not differ materially from that first quoted, except that it is less complicated and the supposition of a quotation from memory somewhat easier.  The critic indeed dismisses the question summarily enough.  He says that ’the slightest comparison of the passage with our Gospels is sufficient to convince any unprejudiced mind that it is neither a combination of texts nor a quotation from memory’ [Endnote 66:1].  But this very confident assertion is only the result of the hasty and superficial examination that the author has given to the facts.  He has set down the impression that a modern might receive, at the first blush, without having given any more extended study to the method of the patristic quotations.  I do not wish to impute blame to him for this, because we are all sure to take up some points superficially; but the misfortune is that he has spent his labour in the wrong place.  He has, in a manner, revived the old ecclesiastical argument from authority by heaping together references, not always quite digested and sifted, upon points that often do not need them, and he has neglected that consecutive study of the originals which alone could imbue his mind with their spirit and place him at the proper point of view for his enquiry.