Another expression which is pointed out occurs in ch. vii., "beseeching in our prayers the all-searching God not to lead us into temptation, as the Lord said: The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."(1) This is compared with the phrase in "the Lord's Prayer" (Matthew vi. 13), or the passage (xxvi. 41): "Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."(2) The second Gospel, however, equally has the phrase (xiv. 38), and shows how unreasonable it is to limit these historical sayings to a single Gospel. The next passage is of a similar nature (c. vi.): "If, therefore, we pray the Lord that he may forgive us, we ought also ourselves to forgive."(3) The thought but not the language of this passage corresponds with Matthew vi. 12--14, but equally so with Luke xi. 4. Now we must repeat that all such sayings of Jesus were the common property of the early Christians--were no doubt orally current amongst them, and still more certainly were recorded by many of the numerous Gospels then in circulation, as they are by several of our own. In no case is there any written source indicated from which these passages are derived; they are simply quoted as words of Jesus, and being all connected either with the "Sermon on the Mount" or the "Lord's Prayer," the two portions of the teaching of Jesus which were most {280} popular, widely known, and characteristic, there can be no doubt that they were familiar throughout the whole of the early Church, and must have formed a part of most or all of the many collections of the words of the Master. To limit them to our actual Gospels, which alone survive, would be quite unwarrantable, and no reference to them, without specification of the source, can be received as evidence even of the existence of our Synoptics. We may here briefly illustrate the point from the Synoptics themselves. Assuming the parable of the Sower to be a genuine example of the teaching of Jesus, as there is every reason to believe, it may with certainty be asserted that it must have been included in many of the records circulating among early Christians, to which reference is made in the prologue to the third Gospel. It would not be permissible to affirm that no part of that parable could be referred to by an early writer without that reference being an indication of acquaintance with our synoptic Gospels. The parable is reported in closely similar words in each of those three Gospels,(1) and it may have been, and probably was, recorded similarly in a dozen more. Confining ourselves, however, for a moment to the three Synoptics: what could a general allusion to the parable of the Sower prove regarding their existence and use, no mention of a particular source being made? Would it prove that all the three were extant, and that the writer knew them all, for each of them containing the parable would possess an equal claim to the reference? Could it with any reason be affirmed that he