Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/390

 354 Readings in European History secular ministrations. The form for priests is this : " Receive the power to offer sacrifice in the Church for the living and the dead, in the name of the Father^ and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And so for each order the proper form shall be used, as fully stated in the Roman pontifical. The regular minister of this sacrament is a bishop ; the benefit, growth in grace, to the end that whosoever is ordained may be a worthy minister. Matrimony. The seventh sacrament is matrimony, the type of the union of Christ and the Church, according to the apostle, who saith, "This is a great mystery 1 ; but I speak con- cerning Christ and the church." The efficient cause of marriage is regularly the mutual consent uttered aloud on the spot. These advantages are to be ascribed to marriage : first, the begetting of children and their bringing up in the worship of the Lord ; secondly, the fidelity that husband and wife should each maintain toward the other; thirdly, the indissoluble character of marriage, for this typifies the indissoluble union of Christ and the Church. Although for the cause of adultery separation is permissible, for no other cause may marriage be infringed, since the bond of marriage once legitimately contracted is perpetual. III. TALES ILLUSTRATING THE MIRACULOUS POWER OF THE SACRAMENTS AND THE RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF THE COMMON PEOPLE There were many tales current in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which were used by preachers and writers to show the wondrous workings of the sacra- ments and the timely intervention in human affairs of the Virgin and the saints. Three collections of these 1 In this passage from Paul's epistle to the Ephesians (v 32) the original Greek word mysterion was translated by the Latin sacramentum, so that the sentence reads in the Vulgate version of the New Testament, Sacramentum hoc magnum est.