[1. It must be borne in mind, that this is a question both negative and positive:--negative on the side of our opponents, with all the difficulties involved in establishing a negative conclusion as to the non-existence in St. Matthew's Gospel of clauses 2, 3, and 5,--and positive for us, in the establishment of those clauses as part of the genuine text in the passage which we are considering. If we can so establish the clauses, or indeed any one of them, the case against us fails: but unless we can establish all, we have not proved everything that we seek to demonstrate. Our first object is to make the adverse position untenable: when we have done that, we fortify our own. Therefore both the Dean and myself have drawn attention to the fact that our authorities are summoned as witnesses to the early existence in each case of 'some of the clauses,' if they do not depose to all of them. We are quite aware of the reply: but we have with us the advantage of positive as against negative evidence. This advantage especially rules in such an instance as the present, because alien circumstances govern the quotation, and regulate particularly the length of it. Such quotation is always liable to shortening, whether by leaving out intermediate clauses, or by sudden curtailment in the midst of the passage. Therefore, actual citation of separate clauses, being undesigned and fortuitous, is much more valuable than omission arising from what cause soever.] [2. The reviewer says that 'all four clauses are read by both texts,' i.e. in St. Matthew and St. Luke, and appears to have been unaware as regards the present purpose of the existence of the fifth clause, or half-clause, in St. Matthew. Yet the words--[Greek: huper ... ton diokonton humas] are a very label, telling incontestibly the origin of many of the quotations. Sentences so distinguished with St. Matthew's label cannot have come from St. Luke's Gospel. The reviewer has often gone wrong here. The [Greek: huper]--instead of the [Greek: peri] after [Symbol: Aleph]BL[Symbol: Xi] in St. Luke--should be to our opponents a sign betraying the origin, though when it stands by itself--as in Eusebius, In Ps. iii.--I do not press the passage.] [3. Nor again does the reviewer seem to have noticed the effects of the context in shewing to which source a quotation is to be referred. It is a common custom for Fathers to quote v. 45 in St. Matthew, which is hardly conceivable if they had St. Luke vi. 27, 28 before them, or even if they were quoting from memory. Other points in the context of greater or less importance are often found in the sentence or sentences preceding or following the words quoted, and are decisive of the reference.]