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heart, as to the multitudes that followed him into the wilderness, "I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way." And if Christ be ever ready offering his holy body and blood, it were very fit we should entertain him: for he never comes but he brings a blessing.

QUESTION III.

But how often is it advisable, that a good man should communicate? Once in a year, or thrice, or every month, or every fortnight; every Sunday, or every day?

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This question hath troubled very many; but to little purpose. For it is all one, as if it were asked, How often should a healthful man eat; or he that hath infirmities, take physic?' And if any man should say, that 'a good man should do well to pray three times a day;' he said true; and yet it were better to pray five times, and better to pray seven times; but if he does, yet must leave spaces for other duties. But his best measures for public and solemn prayer, is the custom of the church in which he lives; and for private, he can take no measures but his own needs, and his own leisure, and his own desires, and the examples of the best and devoutest persons, in the same circumstances. And so it is in the frequenting the holy communion. The laws of the church must be his least measure; the custom of the church may be his usual measure; but if he be a devout person, the spirit of devotion will be his certain measure; and although that will consult with prudence and reasonable opportunities, yet it consults with nothing else; but communicates by its own heights and degrees of excellency. St. Jerome advises Eustochium, a noble virgin, and other religious persons, to communicate twice every month. Some did every Sunday; and this was so general a custom in the ancient church, that the Sunday was called the day of bread,' as we find in St. Chrysostom and in consonancy to this, the church of England commands that the priests, resident in collegiate or cathedral churches, should do so; and they, whose work

¶ Metuebat Maria, ne amor Magistri sui in corpore suo refrigesceret, si corpus ejus non inveniret: quo viso, recalescebat. Origen. homil. 1. ex variis.

Ad Eustoch. Virg. c. 9.

• Homil. 5. de Resurrect.

and daily employment is to minister to religion, cannot, in such circumstances, pretend a reasonable excuse to the contrary. But I desire these things may be observed:

1. That when the fathers make a question concerning a frequent communion, they do not dispute whether it be advisable, that good people should communicate every month, or every fortnight, or whether the more devout, or less employed, may communicate every week;- for of this they make no question:- but whether every day's communion be fit to be advised, that they question. And I find, that as they are not earnest in that, so they indefinitely give answer, that a frequent communion is not to be neglected at any hand, if persons be worthily prepared.

2. The frequency of communion is to be estimated by the measures of devout people in every church respectively. And although, in the apostolical ages, they who communicated but once a fortnight, were not esteemed to do it frequently; yet now, they who communicate every month, and upon the great festivals of the year besides, and upon other solemn and contingent occasions, and at marriages, and at visitations of the sick, — may be said to communicate frequently, in such churches where the laws enjoin but three or four times every year, as in the church of England, and the Lutheran churches. But this way of estimating the frequency of communion, is only when the causes of inquiry are for the avoiding of scandal, or the preventing of scruples; but else the inward hunger and thirst, and the spirit of devotion married to opportunity, can give the truest mea

sures.

3. They that communicate frequently, if they do it worthily, are charitable and spiritual persons, and, therefore, cannot judge or undervalue others that do not; for no man knows concerning others, by what secret principles and imperfect propositions they are guided. For although these measures we meet with in antiquity, are very unreasonable, yet few do know them; and all of them do not rely upon them, and their own customs, or the private word of their own guides, or their fears, or the usages of the church in which they live, or some leading example, or some secret impediment which ought not, but is thought sufficient: any of these, or many other things, may retard even good per

sons from such a frequency as may please others; and that which one calls opportunity, others do not. But, however, no man ought to be prejudiced in the opinion of others: for besides all this now reckoned, the receiving of the holy sacrament is of that nature of good things, which can be supplied by internal actions alone, or sometimes by other external actions in conjunction; and it hath a suppletory of its own, viz. spiritual communion:- of which I am to give account in its proper place. And when we consider, that some men are of strict consciences, and some churches are of strict communions, and will not admit communicants but upon such terms, which some men cannot admit, it will follow, that as St. Austin's expression is," Men should live in the peace of Christ, and do according to their faith :" but that, in these things, no man should judge his brother, In this no man can directly be said to do amiss, but he that loaths manna, and despises the food of angels, or neglects the supper of the Lamb, or will not quit his sin, or contend towards perfection, or hath not the spirit of devotion, or does any way, by implication, say, That the table of the Lord is contemptible.'

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4. These rules and measures, now given, are such as relate to those, who, by themselves or others, are discernibly in, or discernibly out of, the state of grace. But there are some, which are in the confines of both states; and neither themselves, nor their guides, can tell to what dominion they do belong. Concerning such, they are, by all means, to be thrust or invited forward, and told of the danger of a real or seeming neutrality in the service of God; of the hatefulness of tepidity, of the uncomfortableness of such an indifference. And for the communions of any such person, I can give no other advice, but that he take his measures of frequency, by the laws of his church, and add what he please to his numbers by the advice of a spiritual guide, who may consider whether his penitent, by his conjugation of preparatory actions, and heaps of holy duties, at that time usually conjoined, do, or is likely to, receive any spiritual progress: for this will be his best indication of life, and declare his uncertain state, if he thrive upon this spiritual nourishment. If it prove otherwise, all that can be said of such persons is, that they are members of the visible church, they are in that

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net, where there are fishes good and bad; they stand amongst the wheat and the tares; they are part of the lump, but whether leavened or unleavened, God only knows;and, therefore, they are such to whom the church denies not the bread of children; but whether it does them good or hurt, the day only will declare. For to such persons as these, the church hath made laws for the set time of their communion: Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, were appointed for all Christians that were not scandalous and openly criminal, by P. Fabianus; and this constitution is imitated by the best constituted church in the world, our dear mother the church of England: and they who do not, at these times, or so frequently, communicate, are censured by the council of Agathon", as unfit to be reckoned among Christians, or members of the Catholic church. Now by these laws of the church, it is intended, indeed, that all men should be called upon to discuss and shake off the yoke of their sins, and enter into the salutary state of repentance: and next to the perpetual sermons of the church, she had no better means to engage them unto returns of piety; hoping, that by the grace of God, and the blessings of the sacrament, the repentance, which at these times solemnly begins, may, at one time or other, fix and abide; these little institutions and disciplines being like the sudden heats in the body, which sometimes fix into a burning, though, most commonly, they go away without any further change. But the church in this case does the best she can, but does not presume that things are well; and indeed as yet they are not: and, therefore, such persons must pass further; or else their hopes may become illusions, and make the men ashamed.

5. I find, that amongst the holy primitives, they who contended for the best things, and loved God greatly, were curious even of little things; and if they were surprised with any sudden indecency, or a storm of passion, they did not dare that day to communicate. "When I am angry, or when I think any evil thought, or am abused with any illusion or foul fancy of the night, intrare non audeo,' 'I dare not enter' (said St. Jerome), I am so full of horror

An. Christi 236. ut Sabellicus et Volaterranus referunt. "Can. 18.

* Adver. Vigilant.

and dread, both in my body and my mind." This was also the case of St. Chrysostom; who, when Eusebius had unreasonably troubled him with an unseasonable demand of justice against Antonine, just as he was going to consecrate the blessed sacrament, departed out of the church, and desired one of the bishops, who by chance was present, to do the office for him; for " he would not offer the sacrifice at that time, having some trouble in his spirity."

2. To this are to be reduced all such great actions, which, in their whole constitution, are great and lawful; but because so many things are involved in their transaction, whereof some unavoidably will be amiss, or may reasonably be supposed so, may have something in the whole, and at the last to be deplored in such cases as these, some great examples have been of advices to abstain from the communion, till, by a general, but a profound repentance, for what hath been amiss, God is deprecated, and the cause of Christian hope and confidence do return. In the ecclesiastical history we read, that when Theodosius had fought prosperously against Eugenius, the usurper of the empire, when his cause was just and approved by God, not only giving testimony by the prediction and warranty of a religious hermit, but also by prodigious events, by winds and tempests fighting for him, and by which he restored peace to the church, and tranquillity to the empire: yet he, by the advice of St. Ambrose, abstained a while from the holy sacrament, and would not carry blood upon his hands, though justly shed, unto the altars; not only following the precedent of David, who, because he was a man of blood, might not build a temple, but for fear lest some unfit appendage should stick to the management of a just employment.

3. Of the same consideration it is, if a person whose life should be very exemplar, is guilty of such a single folly, which, it may be, would not dishonour a meaner man, but is a great vanity and reproach to him; a little abstention, and a penitential separation (when it is quit from scandal), was

y Palladius in vita S. Chrysost.

z Tu, genitor, cape sacra manu patriosque penates:

Me, bello è tanto digressum et cæde recenti,
Attrectare nefas: donec me flumine vivo

Abluero

Æneid. ii.

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