DOXOLOGY, a hymn in praise of the Almighty. The name is often applied to the Trisagion, or “Holy, Holy, Holy,” the scriptural basis of which is found in Isaiah vi. 3; to the Hallelujah of several of the Psalms and of Rev. xix.; and to the last clause of the Lord’s Prayer according to Saint Matthew, which critics are generally agreed in regarding as an interpolation. It is used, however, more definitely as the designation of two hymns distinguished by liturgical writers as the Greater and Lesser Doxologies. The origin and history of these it is impossible to trace fully. The germ of both is to be found in the Gospels; the first words of the Greater Doxology, or Gloria in Excelsis, being taken from Luke ii. 14, and the form of the Lesser Doxology, or Gloria Patri, having been in all probability first suggested by Matt, xxviii. 19. The Greater Doxology, in a form approximating to that of the English prayer-book, is given in the Apostolical Constitutions (vii. 47). This is the earliest record of it, unless, indeed, the Apostolical Constitutions be taken to be of a later date than the Alexandrine Codex, where the hymn also occurs. Alcuin attributes the authorship of the Latin form—the Gloria in Excelsis — to St Hilary of Poitiers (died 368), but this is at best only a plausible conjecture. The quotations from the hymn in the De Virginitate of Athanasius, and in Chrysostom (Hom. 69 in ΛfattJιf), include only the opening words (those from St Luke’s gospel), though the passage in Athanasius shows by an et caetera that only the commencement of the hymn is given. These references indicate that the hymn was used in private devotions; as it does not appear in any of the earliest liturgies, whether ‘Eastern or Western, its introduction into the public services of the ...