H. _That there is evidence that the earlier records were not the Gospels now esteemed Canonical._ This position is based on the undisputed fact that the "Evangelical quotations" in early Christian writings differ very widely from sentences of somewhat similar character in the Canonical Gospels, and also from the circumstance that quotations not to be found in the Canonical Gospels are found in the writings referred to. Various theories are put forward, as we have already seen, to account for the differences of expression and arrangement: the Fathers are said to have quoted loosely, to have quoted from memory, to have combined, expanded, condensed, at pleasure. To prove this general laxity of quotation, Christian apologists rely much on what they assert is a similar laxity shown in quoting from the Old Testament; and Mr. Sanday has used this argument with considerable skill. But it does not follow that variations in quotations from the Old Testament spring from laxity and carelessness; they are generally quite as likely to spring from multiplicity of versions, for we find Mr. Sanday himself saying that "most of the quotations that we meet with are taken from the LXX. Version; and the text of that version was, at this particular time especially, uncertain and fluctuating. There is evidence to show that it must have existed in several forms, which differed more or less from that of the extant MSS. It would be rash, therefore, to conclude at once, because we find a quotation differing from the present text of the LXX., that it differed from that which was used by the writer making the quotation" ("Gospels in the Second Century," pp. 16, 17). Besides, it must not be forgotten that the variation is sometimes too persistent to spring from looseness of quotation, and that the same variation is not always confined to one author. The position for which we contend will be most clearly appreciated by giving, at full length, one of the passages most relied upon by Christian apologists; and we will take, as an example of supposed quotation, the long passage in Clement, chap. xiii.:-- MATTHEW. CLEMENT. LUKE.