12. The prayer for unity echoes the habitual Jewish prayers for the return of all Israel to Palestine; compare the Didache. 13. Compare on 3. 7. In this prayer as a whole the accumulation of phrases in 5-6 is largely due to Hippolytus, who may likewise be responsible for parts of 7-8. But, even as it stands, it is noteworthy for its sobriety and directness, both characteristic of the later Roman liturgy until Gallican floridity affected it. The liturgical influence of this prayer has been incalculable. It is the basis of the liturgy in the Constitutions, through which it determined the form and in part the wording of the great Eastern liturgies, St James,[175] St Basil and St Chrysostom. In the other Eastern rites its influence is usually perceptible, though less fundamental, while in the Ethiopic church it is still used almost unchanged. In the West, however, later eucharistic conceptions led to a different type of liturgy. Hippolytus gives only the vital part of the ceremony, which otherwise was presumably much as it is described in Justin, _Apology_ 67. But perhaps at a consecration service the opening lessons and instruction were omitted. 5-6 This blessing at the eucharist of food other than the bread and wine is a remnant of the primitive custom when the rite included a meal; in Hippolytus’s day, presumably, the cheese and olives were eaten at the service and part of the oil was sipped, the remainder being reserved for anointing the sick.[176] Perhaps only Hippolytus’s exaggerated reverence for the past preserved the usage, which at any rate soon disappeared. None of the other versions of his treatise retain chapter 6, for which the Canons[177] substitute a blessing of first-fruits. In the Testament the oil is blessed solely for the sick,[178] and this is probably the conception in the Ethiopic and the Canons. The Sahidic and Arabic replace all of 4-6 with a note that the bishop should follow “the (local) custom”. The usual Old Testament background to these prayers need hardly be pointed out. The prayer at the blessing of the oil has real affinities with the prayer still used in the Roman church for blessing the “oil of the sick” at the bishop’s Maundy Thursday eucharist. 6 2. This ingeniously worded prayer has no parallel. 3. Compare Zechariah 4. 12. 4. Compare the Jewish use of fixed _initial_ clauses in benedictions. 8 PRESBYTERS