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The omission of this passage from the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke is of such significance that it has already occasioned a bulky literature. Those of us who are privileged to experience the peace of being in the Church of the Rock are intellectually unprejudiced towards the discussion, because whatever way the discussion turns, it always turns into a confirmation of the Petrine position. If on the one hand it be argued that Mark and Luke did not know of this text but that it found its way almost at once into the text of the first gospel, we are faced with the fact of such a widespread acceptance of St. Peter’s supremacy that a spurious text could be given citizenship in the gospel written, not by a mere disciple like Mark or Luke, but by an apostle, Matthew.

If, on the contrary, the text was known, as indeed the present writer thinks it was known, though omitted, by Mark and Luke, inclusion in the gospel of one who was an apostle and an eye-witness of the incident is first-hand authority which no later omissions can destroy.