One and the same reply has been rendered to this inquiry ever since the days of Erasmus. A note in the Complutensian Polyglott (1514) expresses it with sufficient accuracy. 'In the Greek copies, after _And deliver us from evil_, follows _For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever_. But it is to be noted that in the Greek liturgy, after the choir has said _And deliver us from evil_, it is the Priest who responds as above: and those words, according to the Greeks, the priest alone may pronounce. This makes it probable that the words in question are no integral part of the Lord's Prayer: but that certain copyists inserted them in error, supposing, from their use in the liturgy, that they formed part of the text.' In other words, they represent that men's ears had grown so fatally familiar with this formula from its habitual use in the liturgy, that at last they assumed it to be part and parcel of the Lord's Prayer. The same statement has been repeated ad nauseam by ten generations of critics for 360 years. The words with which our Saviour closed His pattern prayer are accordingly rejected as an interpolation resulting from the liturgical practice of the primitive Church. And this slipshod account of the matter is universally acquiesced in by learned and unlearned readers alike at the present day. From an examination of above fifty ancient oriental liturgies, it is found then that though the utmost variety prevails among them, yet that _not one_ of them exhibits the evangelical formula as it stands in St. Matt. vi. 13; while in some instances the divergences of expression are even extraordinary. Subjoined is what may perhaps be regarded as the typical eucharistic formula, derived from the liturgy which passes as Chrysostom's. Precisely the same form recurs in the office which is called after the name of Basil: and it is essentially reproduced by Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Jerusalem, and pseudo-Caesarius; while something very like it is found to have been in use in more of the Churches of the East. '_For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory_, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, now and always and _for ever_ and ever. _Amen_.' But as every one sees at a glance, such a formula as the foregoing,--with its ever-varying terminology of praise,--its constant reference to the blessed Trinity,--its habitual [Greek: nun kai aei],--and its invariable [Greek: eis tous aionas ton aionon], (which must needs be of very high antiquity, for it is mentioned by Irenaeus[170], and may be as old as 2 Tim. iv. 18 itself;)--the doxology, I say, which formed part of the Church's liturgy, though transcribed 10,000 times, could never by possibility have resulted in the unvarying doxology found in MSS. of St. Matt. vi. 13,--'_For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen._'