Let these words of Clement, given both for the sake of the narrative and for the profit of those who shall read them, be set down here by me. But come, let us also indicate the undisputed writings of this same apostle.
First, then, let the Gospel according to him be acknowledged, since it is recognized among the churches throughout the world under heaven. That it was with good reason reckoned by the ancients in the fourth place after the other three may be made plain in this way.
Those inspired and truly godly men, I mean the apostles of Christ, having most thoroughly purified their lives and adorned their souls with every virtue, but being unskilled in speech, yet confident in the divine and wonder-working power granted them by the Saviour, neither knew how, nor attempted, to set forth their Teacher's teachings with the persuasiveness and art of words. Using only the demonstration of the divine Spirit that worked together with them, and the wonder-working power of Christ accomplished through them, they proclaimed the knowledge of the kingdom of the heavens to the whole inhabited world, taking little thought for the writing of books.
And this they did inasmuch as they were ministering to a greater service that was above man. At any rate Paul, who of all was most powerful in the marshalling of arguments and most able in thought, committed to writing nothing more than the briefest epistles, although he had countless ineffable things to say, seeing that he had touched the visions reached as far as the third heaven, had been caught up to the very paradise that befits God, and had been counted worthy to hear there the unspeakable words.
Now the rest of our Saviour's disciples were not without experience of these same things—the twelve apostles, the seventy disciples, and countless others besides them. Yet of all those who had companied with the Lord, only Matthew and John have left us memoirs; and tradition holds that they came to the writing of necessity.
For Matthew, having first preached to the Hebrews, when he was about to go also to others, committed to writing in his native tongue the Gospel according to himself, and thus by his writing supplied to those from whom he was departing what was lacking through his bodily absence.
And when Mark and Luke had already published the Gospels according to them, John, they say, who all the while had used unwritten preaching, at last came to the writing for the following reason. The three previously written Gospels had by now been distributed to all, including himself; and they say that he accepted them, testifying to their truth, but that there was lacking to the written record only the narrative of the things done by Christ at the first, at the beginning of the preaching.
And the account is surely true. For one may observe that the other three evangelists recorded only the things done by the Saviour during the one year after the imprisonment of John the Baptist in the prison, and that they noted this very thing at the beginning of their narrative.
At any rate, after the forty-day fast and the temptation that followed it, Matthew indicates the time of his own narrative by saying, 'And when he heard that John had been delivered up, he withdrew from Judaea into Galilee.'
And Mark likewise says, 'Now after John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee.' And Luke too, before he begins the acts of Jesus, similarly notes it, saying that Herod, adding to the wicked deeds he had committed, shut up John in prison.
For these reasons, then, they say that the apostle John was asked to record in the Gospel according to him the period passed over in silence by the earlier evangelists, and the things done during it by the Saviour—that is, the things before the imprisonment of the Baptist—and to note this very thing: at one time saying, 'This beginning of his marvellous works did Jesus,' at another making mention of the Baptist in the midst of the acts of Jesus as still baptizing then at Aenon near Salim, and plainly declaring this by saying, 'For John was not yet cast into prison.'
Accordingly John, in the writing of the Gospel according to him, hands down the things done by Christ when the Baptist had not yet been cast into prison, while the remaining three evangelists record the things after the Baptist's confinement in the prison.
If one attends to this, the Gospels no longer appear to disagree with one another, since that according to John contains the first of Christ's acts, while the rest contain the history that took place at the close of the period. With good reason, then, John passed over in silence the genealogy according to the flesh of our Saviour, since it had already been written out by Matthew and Luke, and began instead with the doctrine of his divinity, this having been reserved for him by the divine Spirit as for one who was greater.
Let this, then, be said by us concerning the writing of the Gospel according to John; and the reason for that according to Mark has been set forth by us above.
But Luke, at the beginning of his own treatise, set forth the reason for which he had made his composition, explaining that, whereas many others had rather rashly undertaken to make a narrative of the matters of which he himself had full assurance, he, being obliged to deliver us from the uncertain suppositions of the others, set forth in his own Gospel the sure account of the things whose truth he had firmly grasped—having profited from his association and life together with Paul and from converse with the other apostles.
Let this much be said by us concerning these matters; but more fittingly, in due time, we shall endeavour to show, by adducing the ancients, what has been said about them by others also.
Of the writings of John, besides the Gospel, the first of his epistles has been acknowledged without dispute both among those of the present time and among the ancients; but the remaining two are spoken against.
And as for the Revelation, the opinion concerning it is still even now drawn either way among the many. Nevertheless, from the testimony of the ancients it too shall, at the proper time, receive its judgement.