  We regularize in a continuous manner the path integral of QED by construction
of a non-local version of its action by means of a regularized form of Dirac's
$\delta$ functions. Since the action and the measure are both invariant under
the gauge group, this regularization scheme is intrinsically non-perturbative.
Despite the fact that the non-local action converges formally to the local one
as the cutoff goes to infinity, the regularized theory keeps trace of the
non-locality through the appearance of a quadratic divergence in the transverse
part of the polarization operator. This term which is uniquely defined by the
choice of the cutoff functions can be removed by a redefinition of the
regularized action. We notice that as for chiral fermions on the lattice, there
is an obstruction to construct a continuous and non ambiguous regularization in
four dimensions. With the help of the regularized equations of motion, we
calculate the one particle irreducible functions which are known to be
divergent by naive power counting at the one loop order.
