The second volume of the work opens with an examination of "the evidence furnished by the apocryphal religious romance generally known by the name of 'The Clementines,'" which includes the Homilies, the Recognitions, and a so-called Epitome--the Homilies and Recognitions being, he says, "the one merely a version of the other," and the Epitome a blending of the other two. As there are in the Clementine Homilies upwards of a hundred quotations of expressions of Jesus, or references to His history (not less than fifty passages from the Sermon on the Mount), it is important to ascertain, if possible, when they were written, and from what writings they quote. The date cannot be determined. The range of probability is from the middle of the second century. If much later, the inquiry does not amount to much, because we know, from ample evidence, such as that of Irenæus, that the Four Gospels as we have them were in existence, and read in the Churches, in the middle of the second century. We presume, therefore, our author takes an early date for granted, or he would not have occupied forty pages in their examination. The first quotation which, he says, agrees with a passage in our Synoptics, occurs in the third Homily, p. 52: "And he cried, saying, Come unto me all ye that are weary;" which agrees with Matt. xi. 28. Because the quotation is not continued, but the following words are an explanation of what "Come unto me," &c., means--"that is, who are seeking truth, and not finding it,"--we are to deem it "evident that so short and fragmentary a phrase cannot prove anything." I exclaim, Indeed! Not in a book that contains a hundred references to the words of Jesus! Not, considering that they are especially the words of Jesus, that no one else so said to the weary, "Come unto me!" Most readers will surely think the contrary should be inferred! Among the quotations are words resembling the text of Matthew xxv. 26-30: "Thou wicked and slothful servant: thou oughtest to have put out my money with the exchangers, and at my coming I should have exacted mine own."[33] If this were the only reference to the Gospels as we have them, the quotation is sufficiently near to make the inference certain that such writings, in some shape, must have been in existence when the Clementine Homilies were written. This our author acknowledges, but he says (vol. ii. p. 17): "If the variations were the exception among a mass of quotations perfectly agreeing with the parallels in our Gospels, it might be exaggeration to base upon such divergences a conclusion that they were derived from a different source. The variations being the rule, instead of the exception, these, _however slight_, become evidence of the use of a different Gospel from ours."[34] [33] "Hom." iii. 61.