Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/138

 122 cases, however, it is clear that some orders had been taken; and therefore, in the strict sense of the term, these Cardinals were no longer laymen. The real state of the case is that the rank of Cardinal is, as every degree in the Pope's Court should strictly speaking he, ecclesiastical, though it is no sacred order, but that practically it has been conferred on laymen by the intervention of a fiction like that invented to make