quotation, insert [Greek: tas hamartias auton]. The saying is well
known to be peculiar to St. Luke. There is perhaps a balance of
evidence against its genuineness, but this is of little
importance, as it undoubtedly formed part of the Gospel as early
as Irenaeus, who wrote much about the same time as Hegesippus.

The remaining passage occurs in a fragment preserved from
Stephanus Gobarus, a writer of the sixth century, by Photius,
writing in the ninth. Referring to the saying 'Eye hath not seen,'
&c., Gobarus says 'that Hegesippus, an ancient and apostolical
man, asserts--he knows not why--that these words are vainly
spoken, and that those who use them give the lie to the sacred
writings and to our Lord Himself who said, "Blessed are your eyes
that see and your ears that hear,"' &c. 'Those who use these
words' are, we can hardly doubt, as Dr. Lightfoot after Routh has
shown [Endnote 144:1], the Gnostics, though Hegesippus would seem
to have forgotten I Cor. ii. 9. The anti-Pauline position assigned
to Hegesippus on the strength of this is, we must say, untenable.
But for the present we are concerned rather with the second
quotation, which agrees closely with Matt. xiii. 26 ([Greek: humon
de makarioi hoi ophthalmoi hoti blepousin, kai ta ota humon hoti
akouousin]). The form of the quotation has a slightly nearer
resemblance to Luke x. 23 ([Greek: makarioi hoi ophthalmoi hoi
blepontes ha blepete k.t.l.]), but the marked difference in the
remainder of the Lucan passage increases the presumption that
Hegesippus is quoting from the first Gospel [Endnote 144:2].

The use of the phrase [Greek: ton theion graphon] is important and
remarkable. There is not, so far as I am aware, any instance of so
definite an expression being applied to an apocryphal Gospel. It
would tend to prepare us for the strong assertion of the Canon of
the Gospels in Irenaeus; it would in fact mark the gradually
culminating process which went on in the interval which separated
Irenaeus from Justin. To this interval the evidence of Hegesippus
must be taken to apply, because though writing like Irenaeus under
Eleutherus (from 177 A.D.) he was his elder contemporary, and had
been received with high respect in Rome as early as the episcopate
of Anicetus (157-168 A.D.).

The relations in which Hegesippus describes himself as standing to
the Churches and bishops of Corinth and Rome seem to be decisive
as to his substantial orthodoxy. This would give reas