"They are unsound on every point, my Lord," replied Lincoln irascibly; "but at your desire I will test them on one or two more.--Tell me, do ye believe that the souls of the dead pass into Purgatory?" "We do not." "Do you pray for the dead?" "No." "Do you invocate the blessed Mary and the saints, and trust to their merits and intercession?" "Never. We worship God, not men." At this point Winchester beckoned to Lincoln, and whispered something in his ear. "I am told," pursued the latter, addressing Gerhardt, "that you hold the priests of holy Church not to be validly consecrated, and have so said in public. Is it so?" "It is so. The temporal power of the Pope has deprived the Church of the true consecration. You have only the shadow of sacraments, and the traditions of men." "You reject the holy sacraments entirely, then?" "Not so. We observe the Eucharist at our daily meals. Our Lord bade us `as oft as we should drink,' to take that wine in remembrance of Him. We do His bidding." "Ye presume to profane the Eucharist thus!" cried Lichfield in pious horror. "Ye administer to yourselves--" "As Saint Basil held lawful," interposed Gerhardt. "Saint Basil spoke of extraordinary occasions when no priest could be had." "But if it be lawful at any time to receive without priestly consecration, it cannot be unlawful, at every time." It did not occur to the Bishop to ask the pertinent question, in what passage of Scripture priestly consecration of the Eucharist was required,--nay, in what passage any consecration at all is ever mentioned. For at the original institution of the rite, our Lord consecrated nothing, but merely gave thanks to God [Note 1], as it was customary for the master of the house to do at the Passover feast; and seeing that "if He were on earth, He should not be a priest." [Note 2.] He cannot have acted as a priest when He was on earth. We have even distinct evidence that He declined so to act [Note 3]. And in any subsequent allusions to this Sacrament in the New Testament [Note 4], there is no mention of either priests or consecration. It did not, however, suit the Bishop to pursue this inconvenient point. He passed at once to another item. "Ye dare to touch the sacred cup reserved to the priests--" "When did Christ so reserve it? His command was, `Drink ye all of it.'" "To the Apostles, thou foolish man!" "Were they priests at that time?" This was the last straw. The question could not be answered except in the negative, for if the ordination of the Apostles be not recorded after the Resurrection [John twenty 21-23], then there is no record of their having been ordained at all. To be put in a corner in this manner was more than a Bishop could stand. "How darest thou beard me thus?" he roared. "Dost thou not know what may follow? Is not the King here, who has the power of life and death, and is he not an obedient son of holy Church?"