They seem to me to fall into two classes: (_a_) Those which contain a lesson for every day in the year: (_b_) Those which only contain [lessons for fixed Festivals and] the Saturday-Sunday lessons ([Greek: sabbatokyriakai]). We are reminded by this peculiarity that it was not till a very late period in her history that the Eastern Church was able to shake herself clear of the shadow of the old Jewish Sabbath[147]. [To these Lectionaries Tables of the Lessons were often added, of a similar character to those which we have in our Prayer-books. The Table of daily Lessons went under the title of Synaxarion (or Eclogadion); and the Table of the Lessons of immovable Festivals and Saints' days was styled Menologion[148].] Liturgical use has proved a fruitful source of textual perturbation. Nothing less was to have been expected,--as every one must admit who has examined ancient Evangelia with any degree of attention. For a period before the custom arose of writing out the Ecclesiastical Lections in the 'Evangelistaries,' and 'Apostolos,' it may be regarded as certain that the practice generally prevailed of accommodating an ordinary copy, whether of the Gospels or of the Epistles, to the requirements of the Church. This continued to the last to be a favourite method with the ancients[149]. Not only was it the invariable liturgical practice to introduce an ecclesiastical lection with an ever-varying formula,--by which means the holy Name is often found in MSS. where it has no proper place,--but notes of time, &c., ['like the unique and indubitably genuine word [Greek: deuteroprotoi][150],' are omitted as carrying no moral lesson, as well as longer passages like the case of the two verses recounting the ministering Angel with the Agony and the Bloody Sweat[151]. That Lessons from the New Testament were probably read in the assemblies of the faithful according to a definite scheme, and on an established system, at least as early as the fourth century, has been shewn to follow from plain historical fact in the tenth chapter of the Twelve Last Verses of St. Mark's Gospel, to which the reader is referred for more detailed information. Cyril, at Jerusalem,--and by implication, his namesake at Alexandria,--Chrysostom, at Antioch and at Constantinople,-- Augustine, in Africa,--all four expressly witness to the circumstance. In other words, there is found to have been at least at that time fully established throughout the Churches of Christendom a Lectionary, which seems to have been essentially one and the same in the West and in the East. That it must have been of even Apostolic antiquity may be inferred from several considerations[152]. For example, Marcion, in A.D. 140, would hardly have constructed an Evangelistarium and Apostolicon of his own, as we learn from Epiphanius[153], if he had not been induced by the Lectionary System prevailing around him to form a counterplan of teaching upon the same model.] Sec. 2.