Definition of "doxology"

The doxology or sacred hymn, which celebrates the glory of the Trinity, is susceptible of very nice, but material, inflections; and the substance of an orthodox, or an heretical, creed, may be expressed by the difference of a disjunctive, or a copulative, particle.

1781, Edward Gibbon, chapter XXI, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume II, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […]

And when those defendants were remonstrated with, their captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs’ teeth, and assured them that by way of doxology to the deed he had done, he would now retain their line, harpoons, and boat, which had remained attached to the whale at the time of the seizure.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 89, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley