This portion of the liturgy was entitled, "The Supper of the Lord and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass." It is divided into "the Ordinary," and "the Canon." The first part begins with the Lord's Prayer; and then follow the Collect for purity, the Introit (now omitted), the _Kyrie Eleison_, the _Gloria in Excelsis, Dominus Vobiscum_, Collects for the day and for the king, the Epistle, Gospel, and Nicene Creed, the sermon, Exhortation, Offertory, and Oblation; _Dominus Vobiscum, Sursum Corda_, the Preface, and the _Sanctus_. The canon now consists of one long prayer of consecration, but in the Prayer-book of 1549 it comprised many other parts copied pretty closely from the missal; and the confession and absolution, which are now transferred to an early part of the ordinary, came in their proper place immediately before the communion. After communion were the _Agnus Dei_ and Post-Communion, the Collects, and other prayers and ceremonies, very much as we have them in the mass. The rubric of 1549 says: "When the clerks have done singing the _Sanctus_, then shall the priest or deacon turn himself to the people and say, 'Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's church;'" to which the present office adds the words, "militant here on earth." An able paper in a collection of essays by advanced ritualists, published in London last year, [Footnote 11] argues from this that prayers for the dead formerly had place and are still allowable in the English liturgy. If this be not so, the author says, "we shall find ourselves placed in a dilemma which to a Catholic mind is inexpressibly painful. For.... it follows that the liturgy of the English Church is the only living liturgy, the only known extant liturgy which is wanting in remembrance of its faithful departed. From which dilemma we may devoutly say, Good Lord, deliver us." [Footnote 11: The Church and the World: Essays on Questions of the Day. By various writers. First series. Edited by the Rev. Orby Shipley, M. A. Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyre. 1866.] In the consecration prayers there is an important part found in the book Of 1549, but now left out, of which the same writer says: "We can scarcely too deeply deplore the loss, or earnestly desire that it may be restored to us." This is the invocation of the Holy Ghost, and it reads as follows: "Hear us, O merciful Father, we beseech thee, and with thy holy spirit and word vouchsafe to bl+ess and sanc+tify these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be to us the body and blood of thy most dearly beloved son Jesus Christ." Here we have not only an authorization but an explicit direction for the use of the sign of the cross, at which many good Episcopalians shudder nervously as at a diabolical popish invention. It was left out of the later Prayer-books, but never prohibited.