This doctrine St. Peter combats by showing that present evils are educative, curative, disguised blessings; and by calling all those passages in Scripture which attribute to God human passions, corruptions of the sacred text in one of its many re‐editions. “God who created the world has not in reality such a character as the Scriptures assign Him,” says St. Peter; “for such a character is contrary to the nature of God, and therefore manifestly is falsely attributed to Him.”(301) From this brief sketch of the doctrines of the Ebionite Church from which the Clementines emanated, it will be seen that its Gospel must have resembled that of the Hebrews, or have been founded on it. The “Recollections of the Twelve” probably existed in several forms, some more complete than others, some purposely corrupted. The Gospel of the Hebrews was in use in the orthodox Nazarene Church. The Gospel used by the author of the Clementines was in use in the same community. It is therefore natural to conclude their substantial identity. But though substantially the same, and both closely related to the Canonical Gospel of St. Matthew, they were not completely identical; for the Clementine Gospel diverged from the received text of St. Matthew more widely than we are justified in concluding did that of the Gospel of the Hebrews. That it was in Greek and not in Hebrew is also probable. The converts to Christianity mentioned in the Recognitions and Homilies are all made from Heathenism, and speak Greek. It is at Caesarea, Tripolis, Laodicaea, that the churches are established which are spoken of in these books,—churches filled, not with Jews, but with Gentile converts, and therefore requiring a Gospel in Greek. The Clementine Gospel was therefore probably a sister compilation to that of the Hebrews and of St. Matthew. The Memorabilia of the Apostles had circulated in Hebrew in the communities of pure Jews, in Greek in those of Gentile proselytes. These Memorabilia were collected into one book by the Hebrew Church, by the Nazarene proselytes, and by the compiler of the Canonical Gospel of St. Matthew. This will explain their similarity and their differences. From what has been said of the Clementines, it will be seen that their value is hardly to be over‐estimated as a source of information on the religious position of the Petrine Church. Hilgenfeld says: “There is scarcely any single writing which is of such importance for the history of the earliest stage of Christianity, and which has yielded such brilliant disclosures at the hands of the most careful critics, with regard to the earliest history of the Christian Church, as the writings ascribed to the Roman Clement, the Recognitions and the Homilies.”(302)