not only with a remark implying a well-known record: "Remembering the words of the Lord Jesus which he spake, teaching, &c." but he reiterates: "For thus he said," in a way suggesting careful and precise quotation of the very words; and he adds at the end: "By this injunction and by these instructions let us establish ourselves, that we may walk in obedience to his holy words, thinking humbly of ourselves."(1) seems improbable that the writer would so markedly have indicated a precise quotation of words of Jesus, and would so emphatically have commended them as the rule of life to the Corinthians, had these precepts been mere floating tradition, until then unstamped with written permanence. The phrase: "As ye show kindness [--Greek--] which is nowhere found in our Gospels, recalls an expression quoted by Justin Martyr apparently from a Gospel different from ours, and frequently repeated by him in the same form: "Be ye kind and merciful [--Greek--] Father also is kind [--Greek--] and merciful."(2) In the very next chapter of the Epistle a similar reference again occurs: "Let us be kind to each other [--Greek--] according to the mercy and benignity of our Creator."(3) Without, however, going more minutely into this question, it is certain from its essential variations in language, thought and order, that the passage in the Epistle cannot be claimed as a compilation from our Gospels; and we shall presently see that some of the expressions in it which are foreign to our Gospels are elsewhere quoted by other Fathers, and there is reason to believe that these "words of the Lord Jesus" were not derived from tradition but {228} from a written source different from our Gospels.(1) When the great difference which exists between the parallel passages in the first and third Synoptics, and still more between these and the second, is considered, it is easy to understand that other Gospels may have contained a version differing as much from them as they do from each other. We likewise subjoin the next passage to which we must refer, with the nearest parallels in our Synoptics. We may explain that the writer of the Epistle is rebuking the Corinthians for strifes and divisions amongst them, and for forgetting that they "are members one of another," and he continues: "Remember the words of our Lord Jesus; for he said:"(2) {229}