When we say the prayer for the whole Church, we humbly beseech God ‘to comfort and succour all those who in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity.’ In the Prayer of Humble Access there are petitions, first to be met with in the earliest form of the English service (1548), which sound like an echo from the already quoted Prayer-book of Serapion, ‘that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His Body, and our souls washed through His most precious Blood.’ Even more intentionally significant are the words of administration appointed to be addressed to every communicant, ‘The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life’; ‘The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.’ These references to the ‘body’ appear to have been deliberately introduced into our service. In the Latin form the celebrant had said, ‘custodiat animam meam in vitam aeternam.’[113] And as the body has its place of privilege, so also it has a share of the corresponding responsibility. In the Prayer of Oblation ‘we offer and present our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice.’ Finally, among the Collects suggested to be said after the Offertory, and at other times ‘as occasion shall serve,’ the foremost place is given to two which are closely connected with the thought of bodily welfare. The first, ‘Assist us mercifully, O Lord,’ was a prayer used in medieval times for persons who had gone on a pilgrimage to seek physical as well as spiritual blessings; the second is for the sanctification and governance of ‘both our hearts and bodies,’ that we may be ‘preserved in body and soul, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.’ [113] It would seem that the fuller form, ‘corpus et animum meam,’ was used by the priest at his own communion in the Mozarabic rite; and that a similar form was prescribed in the Cologne use of the fourteenth century for communicating the people. (Daniel, _Codex Liturgicus_, i. pp. 105, 147.) Otherwise the rule was as stated above. It is interesting to note, however, that the words ‘corpus et’ were very generally employed in administering _to the sick_ in medieval England (see the _York Manual_, Surtees, lxiii. pp. 51, 52). So then, in our Prayer-book, as in the older service books, the benefit of the body is closely associated with the gain which is sought for the soul. The physical effect is regarded as dependent upon the spiritual gift. As the Bishop of Birmingham has put it, ‘though in the Holy Communion the body is sanctified through the sanctification of our spirit, and transformed and endowed, in subtle and secret ways which pass our comprehension, with capacity for the life immortal; yet it is through the spirit and not directly.’[114] The blessing begins with the spirit, but it certainly does not end there. [114] _Body of Christ_, p. 64. * * * * *