tire evidence?

The whole matter may be conveniently restated thus:--Liturgical use has
indeed been the cause of a depravation of the text at St. Matt. vi. 13;
but it proves on inquiry to be the very few MSS.,--not the very
many,--which have been depraved.

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