on to think
that he made use of our present Gospels, and the few quotations
that have come down to us confirm that view not inconsiderably,
though by themselves they might not be quite sufficient to prove
it.

There is one passage that may be thought to point to an apocryphal
Gospel, 'From these arose false Christs, false prophets, false
apostles;' which recalls a sentence in the Clementines, 'For there
shall be, as the Lord said, false apostles, false prophets,
heresies, ambitions.' It is not, however, nearer to this than to
the canonical parallel, Matt. xxiv. 24 ('There shall arise false
Christs and false prophets').

2.

In turning from Hegesippus to Papias we come at last to what seems
to be a definite and satisfactory statement as to the origin of
two at least of the Synoptic Gospels, and to what is really the
most enigmatic and tantalizing of all the patristic utterances.

Like Hegesippus, Papias may be described as 'an ancient and
apostolic man,' and appears to have better deserved the title. He
is said to have suffered martyrdom under M. Aurelius about the
same time as Polycarp, 165-167 A.D. [Endnote 145:1] He wrote a
commentary on the Discourses or more properly Oracles of the Lord,
from which Eusebius extracted what seemed to him 'memorable'
statements respecting the origin of the first and second Gospels.
'Matthew,' Papias said [Endnote 146:1], 'wrote the oracles
([Greek: ta logia]) in the Hebrew tongue, and every one
interpreted them as he was able.' 'Mark, as the interpreter of
Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, all that he
remembered that was said or done by Christ. For he neither heard
the Lord nor attended upon Him, but later, as I said, upon Peter,
who taught according to the occasion and not as composing a
connected narrative of the Lord's discourses; so that Mark made no
mistake in writing down some things as he remembered them. For he
took care of one thing, not to omit any of the particulars that he
heard or to falsify any part of them.'

* * * * *

Let us take the second of these statements first. According to it
the Gospel of St. Mark consisted of notes taken down, or rather
recollected, from the teaching of Peter. It was not written 'in
order,' but it was an original work in the sense that it was first
put in writing by Mark himself, having previously existed only in
an oral form.

Does this agree with the f