instant all together. But words take time to say, and these things cannot all be expressed at once, so dramatically they are represented as happening successively. In the ordination service the same thing is still more marked; the bishop lays on his hands, then gives the subject "the grace of priesthood," gives him the vestments, blesses again, invokes the Holy Ghost, consecrates with chrism, gives the power of saying Mass, and, at the very end, after the subject has already concelebrated, lays on hands again and gives him the power of forgiving sins. One could argue that a man must at any moment either be a priest or not be one, and that as soon as he is a priest God has given him all these things. In our burial service we pray that God may not hand over the soul of the dead man into the hands of the enemy nor let him bear the pains of hell. That matter was settled irrevocably as soon as he died, probably some days before. These, then, are examples of the way in which the Church, necessarily using our manner of speaking, separates in expression things that before God must happen at once. And so in the Mass, just as we speak of "this spotless offering" some time before the Consecration,[1] we might invoke the Holy Ghost to work the great change afterwards (as all the Eastern Uniates do), without doubting that really the spotless offering is made and the Holy Ghost changes and consecrates when we say the words of institution. But since we now do ask at what exact moment the bread and wine are consecrated. Catholics are most certainly right in fixing it at the time we say our Lord's own words. We know that he said those words, and that he told us to do as he had done. There is no evidence for any sort of Epiklesis at the Last Supper.[2]
6. Purgatory.
The Orthodox appear to differ from us as to what happens after death. They pray for the dead as much as we do, but they
