Note 99 — CHAP. V.

Footnote 99:

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In the fourth century Pope Innocent I in his epistle to Decentius assigns as a reason, why the holy sacrifice is not offered up on this day, the example of the apostles who, concealing themselves for fear of the Jews, spent this and the following day in fasting and mourning for the death of their master, and were thus debarred from the holy mysteries. During the whole of Lent the Greek church still celebrates, towards evening, only the mass of the presanctified, except on Saturdays and Sundays, and on the feast of the Annunciation, when the ordinary mass is offered up. This is one of the ancient instances of communion under one kind; for, as Leo Allatius observes, either it is received under the form of bread alone, or if some drops of the sacred blood were sprinkled on the host, all the species of wine have disappeared before communion. (De utriusque Ecclesiæ consensione, p. 875). Neither in the Latin or the Greek church is the mass of the pre-sanctified a Missa sicca or dry mass: in which not only the consecration, but also the communion, and all those prayers which are said over the holy Eucharist, used to be omitted. See Durandus in Rationali c. 1. This is the only day in the year on which mass is not offered up in the Latin church, and even on it the priest communicates: on holy Saturday mass is said, but the priest alone communicates: on all other days all the faithful may and many do communicate, either during mass or before or after it according to circumstances. Palmer having quoted a passage from Bona, in which the Cardinal regrets that communion, as well as other rites to which the mass is not essential, is often delayed till after the mass is ended, subjoins the following ejaculation. "Would that they who communicate with the Roman church were not too timid or too lukewarm to return to the practice of the primitive church in this and many other respects". Orig. Liturg. vol. 2, p. 154. Now in the primitive church the faithful, and even those in health, used to communicate not only during mass, but also at other times, as is evident from the office of the presanctified, at which, according to the Gelasian sacramentary, all present communicated, as well as from the numerous ancient instances of communion under one kind mentioned in the preceding chapter; for in these cases it was not received during the mass, and many of them are cases of "persons in health". In the same page Mr. Palmer observes that "during all the primitive ages the whole body of the faithful communicated at each celebration of the liturgy". Now has the church of England preserved this "practice of the primitive church"? So far is this from being the case, that Palmer considers her ordinary office as a "Missa sicca; or dry service" p. 164, in which there is neither consecration or communion, and the earliest notice of which occurs in the writings of Petrus Cantor (A.D. 1200), according to Palmer's own admission, ibid. Even on those few days in the year when she admits her children to communion, her ministers generally consider that they make an oblation only of bread and wine, and not of the body and blood of Christ, whereas, whatever Palmer or the Tracts for the Times may say to the contrary, we are prepared to prove from the very liturgies, which the former cites, that in the mass there is an oblation not merely of bread and wine but also of the body and blood of Christ; and accordingly even the author of Tract 81, vol. 4, admits, p. 61, that "the real point of difference between the primitive church and modern views is whether there be in this oblation a mystery or no". It is truly lamentable that men of learning should falsely accuse the Roman church of departure from primitive discipline in a matter of so little comparative importance as the precise time when communion is to be received, while they themselves must acknowledge, that they have abolished communion itself as well as consecration on nearly all the days of the year, and that they have reduced the oblation of the mass from a 'mystery' and a 'venerable, tremendous and unbloody sacrifice' (Palmer vol. 2, p. 84) to an offering of bread and wine. They have thus deprived their followers of the inestimable fruits of communion enumerated by Christ in the gospel—yet these forsooth are the men who charge Catholics with a departure from primitive practice. How many other primitive practices mentioned in this work have been abolished by the church of England!