Note 102 — SERMON VI. The Christian Altar.

Some attempts have been lately made to throw doubt upon the authenticity of the copies of the ancient liturgies which have come down to us, as not certainly uninterpolated in places in later times. But whether there may be any ground at all for such suspicion or not, it is evident that the inferences drawn from the liturgies, both in this passage and in a former sermon, will not be affected. For the argument, as used in these sermons, is not dependent upon a phrase or a sentence here or there, which, it may be alleged, is open to question, but is based upon doctrine interwoven with their whole system, and pervading their whole structure, and is what moreover is borne witness to, as thus pervading them, by the whole mass of contemporary Christian writing. The liturgies, therefore, must not merely have been interpolated in places, but almost entirely re-written in another sense, and the great bulk of the writings of the Fathers forged to agree with this change, if the argument above is to be shaken by the question raised concerning them.