Editorial note — Chapter VIII · OF CONSECRATIONS AND UNCTIONS

[Footnote 539: Hebrews x, 1.] [Footnote 540: Exodus xxxix.] [Footnote 541: The history, use, and symbolism of the sacred vestments would themselves require a volume to be fully illustrated.] [Footnote 542: Observe that when a person in confirmation is blessed on the forehead, and when salt, and water, and palls, and vestments, and the like be consecrated, the hands are held over them, because there is a certain virtue in consecrated hands, which is as it were stirred up when benediction is poured out over anything with the hands suspended in this way. Whence the Apostle admonishing his disciple Timothy, saith, "I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee, by the laying on of my hands." So that devotion may be stirred up in the body by the suspension of hands, just as in the heart by the effect. For virtue existeth not only in animate things, but also in inanimate. Whence some do affirm that by the virtue of a church, if anyone entereth therein from devotion, his venial sins be forgiven. Again, the hands are thus held in cases of exorcism especially, as if the priest by the bodily act would put to flight and threaten the devil by the virtue of the consecration of his hands.'—Durandus ii, 9, 16.]