Origen, on Sir 18:7

“What is man, and what is his grace? and what is his good, or what is his evil?”

“In the three [Synoptic] Gospels, John the Baptist says he is not sufficient, while in the Gospel of John he says he is not worthy. But it may be that the one who formerly declared that he was not sufficient became sufficient later, even though perhaps he was not worthy. Or it may have been that while he was saying he was not worthy, and was in fact not worthy, he came to be worthy—unless one would say that human nature can never arrive at performing this loosing or this bearing in a worthy manner and that John, therefore, speaks the truth when he says that he never became sufficient to loose the thongs of our Savior's sandals, nor was he worthy of doing so either. No matter how much we try to understand, there are still things left that we do not understand. This is what we read in the Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach: "When a person has finished, he is just beginning, and when he stops, he will be at a loss."”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.