; which, it is
accordingly assumed, must have found their way surreptitiously into the
text of all the other copies in existence. But let me ask,--Is it at all
likely, or rather is it any way credible, that in a matter like this,
all the MSS. in the world but nine should have become corrupted? No
hypothesis is needed to account for one more instance of omission in
copies which exhibit a mutilated text in every page. But how will men
pretend to explain an interpolation universal as the present; which may
be traced as far back as the second century; which has established
itself without appreciable variety of reading in all the MSS.; which has
therefore found its way from the earliest time into every part of
Christendom; is met with in all the Lectionaries, and in all the Greek
Liturgies; and has so effectually won the Church's confidence that to
this hour it forms part of the public and private devotions of the
faithful all over the world?

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