The course he has
adopted, I can well understand, is more convenient for him and, after
all, with many it is quite as effective.
It may be well that I should here again illustrate the necessity for
such canons of criticism as I have indicated above, and which can be
done very simply from our own Gospels:
"Not only the language but the order of a quotation must have its
due weight, and we have no right to dismember a passage and,
discovering fragmentary parallels in various parts of the Gospels,
to assert that it is compiled from them and not derived, as it
stands, from another source. As an illustration, let us for a moment
suppose the 'Gospel according to Luke' to have been lost, like the
'Gospel according to the Hebrews' and so many others. In the works
of one of the Fathers we discover the following quotation from an
unnamed evangelical work: 'And he said unto them ([Greek: elegen de
pros autous]): 'The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are
few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he would send
forth labourers into his harvest. Go your ways ([Greek: hupagete]):
behold, I send you forth as lambs ([Greek: arnas]) in the midst of
wolves.' Following the system adopted in regard to Justin and
others, apologetic critics would of course maintain that this was a
compilation from memory of passages quoted from our first
Gospel--that is to say, Matt ix, 37: 'Then saith he unto his
disciples ([Greek: tote legei tois mathetais autou]), The harvest,'
&c.
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