V. Certain Points of Interest not Already Treated

1. Infant Communion

In the primitive Church, the newly baptized were immediately admitted to communion; and with the growing frequency of infant baptism the same custom was still maintained. Cygrian (De lapsis, ix.) speaks of children who at the outset of their lives have received "the meat and drink of the Lord," and similar evidence may be collected from the Apostolic Constitutions, Dionysius the Areopagite, Paulinus of Nola (d. 431), and Gennadiue of Marseilles (c. 492). The neces sity of communion to salvation being taught on the basis of John vi. 53, this argument is applied to the communion of infants by Augustine and by Inno cent I. But evidences of the practise are not con fined to the first six centuries, as some have con tended; on the contrary, they come down as late as the twelfth, in which Paschal II. (1118) prescribes that the two elements are to be separately admin istered "except to infants and those who are so weak that they can not swallow the bread," and Robertus Paululus speaks of the custom as extant, although beginning to disappear. A synodal or dinance of Odo, bishop of Paris, in 1175, and a canon of the Synod of Bordeaux in 1255 attest its cessation in France, the latter prescribing the ad ministration of blessed bread (see Eulogia) instead of the Host. It is a question whether the existence of the custom can be shown in Germany later than the twelfth century. The Council of Trent ruled finally (Seaaio XXI. chap. 4) that children below the age of reason were bound by no necessity to sac ramental communion of the Eucharist, " although antiquity is not to be condemned for observing this custom in certain places and times." The Greek Church has retained the practise to the present day. The Evangelical churches, making admission to communion dependent on spiritual maturity as evi denced by a special examination, have .naturally not retained it.

(Georg Rietschel.)

2. Communion of the Sick

In the early Church it was customary to carry the consecrated elements immediately after service to the sick and to prisoners; and two passages in Tertullian (Ad uxorem, II., v.; De oraCiorae, six.) seem to imply the custom of communicating at home under the species of bread even apart from illness. Later we find the consecrated bread carried on journeys and used as an amulet, a practise against which more than one council legislated. With the introduction of communion in one kind it became usual to carry the consecrated bread to the sick immediately after mesa or from the tabernacle in which it was reserved; and the strict enforcement of the rule of fasting communion made it desirable as obviating the necessity of the priest's having to celebrate in the afternoon or evening for a person in sudden danger of death. In the Church of England a special service is provided for the celebration of the communion in the sick room, somewhat shorten than the usual form; but in re cent years, with the growth of the practise of reser vation, the elements are not infrequently carried from the church and administered with a brief form of prayer. The Lutheran Church freely allows pri vate communion, while the Reformed discourages it.