s 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