Nor is any one at liberty to appeal to a yet earlier period than is attainable by existing liturgical evidence; and to suggest that then the doxology used by the priest may have been the same with that which is found in the ordinary text of St. Matthew's Gospel. This may have been the case or it may not. Meanwhile, the hypothesis, which fell to the ground when the statement on which it rested was disproved, is not now to be built up again on a mere conjecture. But if the fact could be ascertained,--and I am not at all concerned to deny that such a thing is possible,--I should regard it only as confirmatory of the genuineness of the doxology. For why should the liturgical employment of the last fifteen words of the Lord's Prayer be thought to cast discredit on their genuineness? In the meantime, the undoubted fact, that for an indefinitely remote period the Lord's Prayer was not publicly recited by the people further than 'But deliver us from evil,'--a doxology of some sort being invariably added, but pronounced by the priest alone,--this clearly ascertained fact is fully sufficient to account for a phenomenon so ordinary [found indeed so commonly throughout St. Matthew, to say nothing of occurrences in the other Gospels] as really not to require particular explanation, viz. the omission of the last half of St. Matthew vi. 13 from Codexes [Symbol: Aleph]BDZ. FOOTNOTES: [145] [I have retained this passage notwithstanding the objections made in some quarters against similar passages in the companion volume, because I think them neither valid, nor creditable to high intelligence, or to due reverence.] [146] [The Textual student will remember that besides the Lectionaries of the Gospels mentioned here, of which about 1000 are known, there are some 300 more of the Acts and Epistles, called by the name Apostolos.] [147] ['It seems also a singular note of antiquity that the Sabbath and the Sunday succeeding it do as it were cohere, and bear one appellation; so that the week takes its name--_not_ from the Sunday with which it commences, but--from the Saturday-and-Sunday with which it concludes.' Twelve Verses, p. 194, where more particulars are given.] [148] [For the contents of these Tables, see Scrivener's Plain Introduction, 4th edition, vol. i. pp. 80-89.] [149] See Scrivener's Plain Introduction, 4th edition, vol. i. pp. 56-65. [150] Twelve Verses, p. 220. The MS. stops in the middle of a sentence. [151] St. Luke xxii. 43, 44. [152] In the absence of materials supplied by the Dean upon what was his own special subject, I have thought best to extract the above sentences from the Twelve Last Verses, p. 207. The next illustration is his own, though in my words. [153] i. 311. [154] [Greek: eipen ho Kyrios tois heautou mathetais; me tarassestho.] [155] [Greek: kai eipen tois mathetais autou]. The same Codex (D) also prefixes to St. Luke xvi. 19 the Ecclesiastical formula--[Greek: eipen de kai eteran parabolen].