Excerpt from The Offices of the Oriental Church: With an Historical Introduction The New Testament and early Liturgies of the Church were composed in the Greek language. Even S. Paul's epistle to the Christians at Rome was written in the Greek, not the Latin tongue and there is every reason to suppose that for many years the services of the Church at Rome were conducted in the Greek language. Four out of five of the Patriarchates into which the Church was portioned were Greek, and one was Latin. A great majority of bishops in the early general councils were Oriental, both in name and origin. A Church which can boast such a lineage as thisis surely entitled to great respect, and the study of her rites should be neglected by no Christian scholar, whatever may be his creed or persuasion. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.