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.