r to break off at the words 'But deliver us from evil.'
They never pronounced the doxology. The doxology must for that reason
have been omitted by the critical owner of the archetypal copy of St.
Matthew from which nine extant Evangelia, Origen, and the Old Latin
version originally derived their text. This is the sum of the matter.
There can be no simpler solution of the alleged difficulty. That
Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose recognize no more of the Lord's Prayer than
they found in their Latin copies, cannot create surprise. The wonder
would have been if they did.

Much stress has been laid on the silence of certain of the Greek Fathers
concerning the doxology although they wrote expressly on the Lord's
Prayer; as Origen, Gregory of Nyssa[171], Cyril of Jerusalem, Maximus.
Those who have attended most to such subjects will however bear me most
ready witness, that it is never safe to draw inferences of the kind
proposed from the silence of the ancients. What if they regarded a
doxology, wherever found, as hardly a fitting subject for exegetical
comment? But however their silence is to be explained, it is at least
quite certain that the reason of it is not because their copies of St.
Matthew were unfurnished with the doxology. Does any one seriously
imagine that in A.D. 650, when Maximus wrote, Evangelia were, in this
respect, in a different state from what they are at present?

The sum of what has been offered may be thus briefly stated:--The
textual perturbation observable at St. Matt. vi. 13 is indeed due to a
liturgical cause, as the critics suppose. But then it is found that not
the great bulk of the Evangelia, but only Codd. [Symbol: Aleph]BDZ, 1,
17, 118, 130, 209, have been victims of the corrupting influence. As
usual, I say, it is the few, not the many copies, which have been led
astray. Let the doxology at the end of the Lord's Prayer be therefore
allowed to retain its place in the text without further molestation. Let
no profane hands be any more laid on these fifteen precious words of the
Lord Jesus Christ.

There yet remains something to be said on the same subject for the
edification of studious readers; to whom the succeeding words are
specially commended. They are requested to keep their attention
sustained, until they have read what immediately follows.

The history of the rejection of these words is in a high degree
instructive. It dates from 1514, when the Complutensian editors, whilst
admitting tha