The Holy Communion its philosophy, theology and practice

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THE HOLY COMMUNION

THE HOLY COMMUNION

ITS PHILOSOPHY, THEOLOGY, & PRACTICE

BY JOHN BERNARD DALGAIRNS

Priest of the Oratory of St Philip Neri

EDITED BY ALLAN ROSS

Priest of the same Congregation

Ai\p$ rb 5i\J/a<rdai 6 Geos.
Sitit sitiri Deus.

St Gregory Nazianzen.

VOLUME II

BURNS & OATES

28 Orchard Street, London, W.
1911

SEP - 7 1955

The CONTENTS of VOLUME II

PART III

THE PRACTICE OFjHOLY COMMUNION

Ch. I. History of Communion 199

P II. Severity and Rigorism 255

III. The Communions of the Imperfect 308

IV. The Limit to Holy Communion 332
V. The Communion of Sinners 354

VI. The Communions of the Worldly 380

VII. The Life of the Frequent Communicant 407

APPENDIX 434

PART III. THE PRACTICE OF
HOLY COMMUNION

CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF COMMUNION

WE have now finished the theoretical part of
our task, and we may proceed at once to
lay down practical rules to guide us in
the administration or reception of the Blessed
Sacrament. There is, however, an intermediate pro-
cess, which cannot fail to help us very much in this
further part of our labours. Nothing can be of such
assistance to us in assigning a criterion for the
frequency of Holy Communion as to trace its
history, and to see according to what standard the
varying discipline of the Church on the subject was
regulated. We know, of course, that the Church
desires her children to approach frequently, even
daily, to receive the Bread of Life, if they are fit for
it; yet we know also that saints have at various times
counselled and adopted in their own persons very
different rules for the reception of the Holy
Eucharist. Let us see, then, whether we can make
out, from the actual practice of the faithful in
different ages, any principles for our own guidance
in this matter. I believe, after a careful considera-
tion of the facts of the case, we shall come to the
conclusion that in measuring the rate of frequency
of communion, spiritual directors in practice have
not considered exclusively the amount of sanctity
in the faithful, but also the amount of the dangers
and temptations in which, from the circumstances
of the time, they were placed.

199

200 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

All history has lately become more living and
familiar. Circumstances which, in ancient times,
were considered beneath the dignity of history, are
now continually found in the pages of the historian.
No one is now satisfied with records and descriptions
of battles and sieges, of treaties and partitions of
territory, of the public life of kings and emperors.
Now we all long to look into the living heart of the
generations which are gone, to treat them as beings
of flesh and blood like ourselves, and to know how
they lived and how they felt and suffered. Some-
thing of the same sympathy with the past ought
surely to be found in the ecclesiastical historian.
We cannot help desiderating in the pages of Fleury
or of Orsi some notice of the intimate life of Chris-
tians of old. Above all, I believe every one would
feel a breathless interest in any revelation of the
interior life of the early Christians. Who, for
instance, would not wish to evoke out of his long
sleep any one of the martyrs, brought from the
catacombs into our churches, and to ask him to
reconstruct for us the life of those who bled and died
with him for the cause of Christ ? What were their
devotions ? what their method of prayers ? had they
any method at all ? did they make their meditation
every morning ? did they go to confession every
Saturday ? how far were they like, how far unlike us
in their trials and temptations, in their feelings and
views ? I at least confess to such a curiosity, and I
believe I am not alone. I have known a good old
Jesuit father at Rome shed tears of joy when a
rudely-painted Madonna was found in the cata-
combs, with her hands lifted up in the attitude of a

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 201

priest at Mass, telling a touching tale of the devo-
tion to Mary of the saints of old. No geologist has
ever gloated over the leaf of a bygone flora or the
footprints of some extinct kind of bird in the old
red sandstone, with half the eagerness that we
gather up the least echo of a hymn sung at the
lighting of lamps, in primitive times, when the
Church was growing dark, or the smallest indica-
tion, in some fragment of a Father, as to how the
early Christians lived their daily life.

It is not often that we can satisfy our curiosity.
As the records of living things in the first period of
the young earth, if there were any, are said to have
been destroyed in the heat of its primeval fire, so
many a document which would tell us of the life of
the first Christians perished in the times of perse-
cution. There seems to be a providential reason for
this destruction of ancient records. Our Lord would
seem to wish to avert the eyes of Christians from
dead tradition to living authority. While enough is
left to show that the early Christians were Catholics,
not enough remains to base our faith solely on the
history of the past. More than sufficient remains to
prove the identity of the ancient and modern Church ;
yet the attempt to make the Church of the Fathers
the only standard of Christian truth becomes simply
absurd, when there are too few Fathers to enable us
to construct out of them a complete account of the
faith and practice of the first centuries.

One thing, however, if nothing else, is perfectly
clear in the lives of the early Christians. A whole
revelation of their interior is contained in the fact of
their intense devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. The

202 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

records of primitive times point to their daily Mass
and Communion. Many a long year passed over
before the touching description of the early Church,
in the Acts of the Apostles, ceased to apply to
Christians, that their chief characteristics were their
perseverance in prayer and their breaking the
Eucharistic bread.The one thing which can be made
out with certainty from the catacombs is, that the
centre and object of all devotion is the altar. For
J miles and miles under Rome extend the tortuous
galleries, excavated with incredible labour out of the
volcanic tufa, for the purpose of being able to offer
up the Adorable Sacrifice. Not the costly pyramids,
built by the hands of tens of thousands of captives,
or the elaborately painted sepulchres of Egypt,
prove more clearly that the people on the banks of
the Nile had a religious reverence for the dead, than
the immense catacombs, dug out under the throne
of the Caesars, by the spade of the poor worker in the
sandpits, prove that the Christian's love all centres
round the Adorable Sacrifice. If they could not have
their daily Mass above ground, they must burrow
under the earth to find it. Besides which, the daily
Communion was an indispensable accompaniment
to the Mass. There are documents which prove that
all present at the Holy Sacrifice received the Holy
Communion. A canon in the Apostolical constitu-
tions pronounces censures against all who do not
communicate at the Mass at which they assist. A
council of Antioch, held under Pope Julius, enacts
the same decree. And, even if it were proved that
these canons only apply to the sacred ministers,
still a well known passage of St Jerome points to

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 203

the relics in his time of the ancient discipline,
when all the faithful present communicated at the
Mass.*

But nothing shows the frequency of communion
amongst the early Christians so clearly as the
exceeding facility with which laymen and women
were entrusted with the Blessed Sacrament. Our
dear Lord puts Himself unreservedly into the hands
of His faithful ones in those fearful times. Human
imagination can hardly conceive a moment of
greater horror than that of the breaking out of a
persecution like that, for instance, under Marcus
Aurelius, in which Polycarp and the martyrs of
Lyons perished. Many a heart must have sunk when
the edict appeared, by which Christians were not
only condemned when accused, as under Trajan,
but systematically sought out by the emperor's
command. Neither age nor sex were safe. At any
given moment, the man of senatorial rank, the
venerable matron, or the girl of sixteen, might be
hurried from the refinement and splendour of a
Roman home before a ruthless magistrate, to be
publicly stripped and scourged, tortured, and put
to death. Amidst all these horrors, the one bright
spot was the Blessed Sacrament. The moment that

♦Chardon, " Histoire des Sac. Eucharistie," c. 6, p. 283 : It has
been argued that the decree which orders all present at the Mass
to communicate applies only to the ecclesiastics. I cannot agree
with this opinion. A comparison of the 8th and 9th Apostolical
canons will show that the faithful were included; and if there is
any ambiguity in the 9th canon, it will be removed by a com-
parison with the 2nd canon of the Council of Antioch. Labbe,
torn. 2, p. 1,396. That canon looks as if it was meant to be an inter-
pretation of the Apostolical canon. Besides, if at that late period
such a discipline was in force,it affords an a fortiori argument for
ts existence previously.

204 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

the Church was declared to be in a state of perse-
cution, the first act of the bishop was to distribute
the Blessed Sacrament amongst the faithful, that
they might take our Lord to their homes, and com-
municate themselves as they pleased with their
own hands. Men and women thus carried home
the Body of Jesus. So much was this distribution
the acknowledged and official declaration that the
Church was in a state of persecution, that, in after
times, heretics, in order to proclaim that they were
persecuted by the Catholics, were known to dis-
tribute the Blessed Sacrament, to be carried away
by the members of their sect. Our Lord set no
bounds to the prodigality with which He gave
Himself to Christians in those awful times; and the
Church knew His mind so well that the utmost
latitude was then allowed, both in the celebration
of Mass and the conveyance of the Holy Eucharist.
Priests crowded into the dungeons, at the risk of
their lives, to offer up the sacrifice for the poor
sufferers in prison. St Lucian, a priest of Antioch,
afterwards martyred at Nicomedia, because he had
no altar, lay down in the prison, and offered Mass on
his own bosom to give communion to the prisoners.
The Blessed Sacrament was entrusted to anyone, in
order to be conveyed to those who were unable to be
present at Mass. A young acolyte, Tharcisius, was
thus carrying it, when he was attacked and beaten
to death by the pagans. Every one knows the
instance quoted in Eusebius from St Denis of
Alexandria. A poor man named Serapion, who
had fallen away in a time of persecution, was on
his death-bed. The priest, unable to carry the

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 205

Viaticum to him, gave it to a child, who conveyed
and administered it to the dying man.

But it was not only in times of persecution that
the Church was thus prodigal and communion thus
frequent. After, according to the discipline of the
times, the one Mass of the bishop, the deacons
used to carry the Blessed Sacrament to those who
could not be present at it. Often was our Lord's
Body hidden under a heathen roof, with no lamp
burning before it, amidst the sculptures and the
images painted on the wall, and the horrors of a
heathen home. We learn this from Tertullian, who
urges the danger of a discovery by a pagan husband,
as an argument with a Christian girl against a mixed
marriage. Thus, even women communicated them-
selves, though they used a linen cloth, while men
received Our Lord in their bare hands.

Beautiful early Church! I begin to understand
the heroism of her children when I see their devo-
tion to the Blessed Sacrament. The maternal
tenderness and the wonderful courage of St Per-
petua become intelligible when we see that the Holy
Communion haunted her in her dreams under the
most familiar image, together with visions of heaven.
There is a touching simplicity in the early Christians
which reminds one of the Indians of Paraguay,
amidst the over-refinement and feeble civilization of
the Roman empire. It is hopeless to efface the
hierarchical element, as it is called, from the
simple records of the early Church. The bishop and
the Holy Eucharist are ever re-appearing. As sheep
obey their shepherd, so they ever have recourse to
the pastor from whom they receive the Bread of

206 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

Life. He is their universal director; he regulates
their marriages;* at his Mass all communicate.
Amidst their profound sorrows and bloody trials,
there is a strange joy in their hearts which radiates
from the Holy Communion. Amongst the scanty
relics which remain of them, the chalices of glass,
stamped with the effigy of the Good Shepherd, in
which the Blood of the Immaculate Lamb was
offered up, figure by the side of the instruments of
torture, bought after the martyr's death from the
executioners. The lyre of joy and the anchor of hope
are engraved on their rings, and bear testimony to
their interior happiness in the midst of the terrible
temptations of the time of persecution. The idea of
death is defaced by the hope of a joyful resurrection;
and the uppermost thought in their minds is, that
the Holy Communion which they have so often
received is the seed of immortality, the pledge of
everlasting life.

Such were the familiar relations between Our
Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and the early
Christians. Nor need we put aside their example, as
though on account of their sanctity they could not in
any sense help us in finding a rule for our own con-
duct. I do not for an instant deny the holiness of the
primitive Christians, nor that their lives in general
were such as would put us to the blush now. I only
contend that their sanctity was not the only reason
for their frequent communions, but that the danger
to which they were exposed, living as they did,
in the midst of a heathen world, had also much to do

* Vide Epistle of St Ignatius to Polycarp, in Cureton's " Corpus
Ignatianum," pp. 9, 1 1,

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 207

with the generous prodigality of Our Lord. A close
study of their condition till, in the beginning of the
fourth century, the empire submitted to the
Church, will show what I mean.

It would be a mistake to suppose that all
Christians in primitive times were saints. We must
remember that there were long intervals in the
three first centuries, when there was no persecution.*
In Proconsular Africa, for instance, it does not
appear that any Christian blood had been shed
before the Scillitan martyrs suffered under Sep-
timus Severus.f When Decius ascended the throne
in 249, many parts of the empire had known no
persecution for thirty years. After the death of
Valerian, in 259, and the promulgation of an edict
of toleration by Gallienus, the Christian Church
was at peace till towards the close of Diocletian's
reign, in 303 .J In the meanwhile thousands had
flocked into the Church who had never calculated
on the honours of martyrdom. Officers in the guards
and fine ladies, eunuchs, chamberlains in the
imperial palace, had been received into the Church.
We may be sure that when the cathedral church of
Nicomedia was broken into on the 22nd of February
and the congregation, who were hearing Mass, was
dispersed, when on Easter morning the emperor's
edict was promulgated, there was hardly less
consternation amongst the Christian flock than

* There were occasional martyrdoms even in these intervals,
but no official or general persecution.

t It is now known that these martyrs suffered death on July 17,
180, in the beginning of the reign of the Emperor Commodus. See
" The Legends of the Saints," by H. Delehaye, S.J. — Ed.

X Neander, torn, I, pp. 180, 194, 197, 204. Ed, Bonn,

208 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

would be the case if the police invaded one of our
churches now. Even in earlier times Christians
could forget the days of persecution. In the third
century a long peace had enervated the minds of
Christians. There could then be bishops, like Paul
of Samosata, whose relations to Queen Zenobia
were certainly more like those of a courtier than a
martyr. Shortly before that, the Decian persecution
fell like a thunderbolt on the rich Christian gentle-
men and ladies of vast, luxurious Alexandria ; many
Christians of high rank came forward, and sacrificed
at once to the heathen gods. Previously to that fear-
ful period there was many a breathing time for the
Church. There were often trembling hopes of victory
for the faith, as various reports came out of the
depths of the palace as to the dispositions of its
imperial inmate and his court. Marcia, the mistress
of Commodus, was a Christian, and had the
greatest influence over him. Julia Mammaea, the
mother of Alexander Severus, had a conference with
Origen ; the emperor himself had an image of Christ
in his private chapel. Philip the Arab was said to be
a Christian. Many a man and woman must have
joined the Christian Church, as converts come to us,
expecting to lead an easy life, to enjoy the sacra-
ments, and go to heaven with tranquillity and
honour.

It could not be otherwise; the net of the Church
gathered together fish of every sort. Fromjdissolute
Corinth, and the learned schools of Athens and Mar-
seilles, they flocked into the Church. Christianity
had penetrated into the waggon of the wandering
Tartar and the hut of the wild Numidian. The

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 209

obstinacy of the Buddhist, the fanaticism of the
Persian fire-worshipper, the superstition engrained
in the hot blood of the proverbially-passionate
African, and the subtlety of the Alexandrian, were
all to be subdued under the yoke of Christ. We
should expect that amongst all these many would,
during a time of long peace, be exposed to fearful
temptations. We must remember that they were
living in the world, and that a world of heathenism.
Christian and Pagan were thrown together in the
utmost confusion. Christian matrons had heathen
husbands ; Christian maidens had pagan fathers and
mothers. The same complicated questions which
trouble Catholics, and especially converts now,
might perplex Christians in the world then. Ques-
tions would arise respecting mixed marriages, and
the ordinary intercourse of social life would be fertile
in cases of conscience, when a Christian at a dinner
party might be offered meats sacrificed to idols, or
be present at libations to heathen gods, or be called
upon to wear crowns of flowers in honour of Bacchus
or Venus. They might be driven into unbelieving
society, they might go to the theatres and to heathen
places of amusement, of the horrors of which not
the worst opera in Europe can give the slightest
idea. Nay, we know they did so. What is more, we
also know that some Christians who frequented the
sacraments were allured into the pagan theatres.
St Cyprian, or whoever is the author of the tract
"De Spectaculis," mentions the fact of a Christian
going straight thither from the church, bearing with
him the Blessed Sacrament, which had just been
distributed. He tells us also of the punishment

210 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

inflicted on a person who received the Holy-
Eucharist in a state of sacrilege, and of the flame of
fire which issued from the vessel where it was
reserved when the Christian who had brought it
home treated it with disrespect.*

From all this it is evident that the frequency of
communion in the early Church was not entirely
because all Christians were saints. Besides this, it is
important not to forget that this discipline of the
Church, with respect to the Blessed Sacrament,
lasted long after the times of persecution. St
Basilf tells us that, in his time, the faithful in
Egypt still carried the Blessed Sacrament home.
Daily Communion, it is true, was more rare, but the
faithful in Alexandria and Caesarea still communi-
cated three or four times a week. Even in an author
of the seventh century, an instance occurs of the
Catholic wife of a heretic husband receiving the
Holy Eucharist at the hands of a neighbouring
woman, who kept it in her house.!

In the meanwhile, apart from and around those
Christians who thus lived at home, following the
ordinary avocations of life, there were silently
springing up a class of men and women, so numerous
and so peculiar that they might be called another
world; I mean that multitudinous host which is
known under the very vague name of the Fathers of
the Desert. So utterly different were they in their
habits and mode of life from Christians living in the
world, that it will be necessary to treat of them
apart. We shall probably be astonished to find^that,
as a general rule, they communicated less often than

*" De Spectaculis," 341 . De Lapsis, 189. f Ep. 289.

J Chardon, ibidt 4.

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 211

the faithful whom we have hitherto considered.
There has been much exaggeration on the subject
of their communions ; fortunately, however, so much
is known about them, that a careful comparison of
facts is all that is necessary to make the subject
clear.

Christian imagination has ever been attracted
towards the saints of the desert. After the time of
martyrdom has ceased, the next object on which
the eye loves to rest is the record of the wonderful
lives of these kind, simple solitaries. It is not too
much to say that the Christian spiritual life was
formed by them. All its reality and dread of self-
deceit, its hatred of pomposity, and its simple
naturalness, even in the highest supernatural states,
its good humour, and most tender charity for the
faults and failings of others ; in a word, all that dis-
tinguishes the monk from the fakir, comes to us from
the saints of the desert. Open the pages of Rodri-
guez, you will find that the rules for self-examina-
tion and for wrestling with temptation, which guide
us even now, come from those dear solitaries. After
all our books on meditation, we might still go back
with profit to the fervid ejaculations and the artless
effusions of their simple hearts in the desert. Strange
that it should ever have been thought that many of
them seldom or never communicated. One reason,
perhaps, for this mistake is the erroneous view con-
veyed by the word desert.

There is a strange attraction to solitude in the
Christian soul. None have ever made any progress
in perfection without feeling a longing to break away
from men, and to be alone with God. This yearning

p2

212 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

for solitude could not fail to show itself early in
the history of the Church ; and it might almost have
been prophesied that it would appear first in Egypt.
The Nile valley is but one narrow strip of green
rescued out of the sandy desert. Close upon the
beautiful cities, swarming with life, centres of com-
merce for the Jew, of learning for the Greek, of easy
living and frantic joy for every race under the sun,
lay the sands of the dead solitary wilderness. A
Christian soul could not long withstand the temp-
tation of flying away like a dove, of escaping out of
this den of wickedness, into the endless expanse of
silent solitude. Not even the solemn chants and the
gorgeous ceremonies of the majestic church of
Athanasius could lure the wanderer back. There
was every requisite for a hermit life. In the two
limestone ranges, on each side of the broad, resist-
less river, in the rocky walls of the gorges which
brought the desert sands close upon the stream, were
numberless caves, ready made for the solitary.
Egypt was a country of ruins. The hermit could live
in a tomb, sleeping with his head on a mummy for
his pillow as St Macarius did once on his travels.
He could find an old castle, once a Roman station,
then a den of coiners, with St Paul. Or, like the
monks of Metanea, he could take up his abode in
many a ruined temple, undistracted by the avenues
of stony-eyed sphinxes looking down upon him in
his prayers, or by the long processions of bright-
coloured figures of Egyptian men and women on the
walls. Or, if he went further into the desert, he
might find an oasis, like that of St Anthony, not far
from the porphyry quarries, green with palm-trees,

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 213

and with clear murmuring water gushing~from the
rock. Above all, what is most to our purpose, he
would, in almost all cases, be at no great distance
from the many villages bordering on the Nile, or
even from a town. The monks could thus combine
two things apparently incompatible — the proximity
of the sacraments and the solitude of the desert.
Accordingly, we find numerous instances of priests
coming to the monks to say Mass on Sundays, or the
monks going to the village church to receive the
Holy Communion. It is this which gives the pecu-
liarly human character to the Fathers of the Egyp-
tian deserts. We read continually of their crossing
the Nile in boats to sell their baskets of palm-leaves.
They let themselves out as reapers in the harvest
season, like Irish labourers. They are the consola-
tion of the poor villagers in the mud hovels on the
banks of the Nile. They kneel at the same altars,
partake in their sufferings, and work miracles on
their sick. They are continually converting whole
villages of barbarian Copts and other heathens.
Above all, their kind hearts could not bear to hear of
poor creatures lost in sin. They are perpetually
sallying out into some great, wicked town, and
rescuing some unhappy Thais or Mary, bringing
them back with them into the desert, to teach them
to do penance, and to love God.

These are the features which would strike every
casual reader of the lives of the Fathers of the
Desert, and which lessen the difficulty which the
imagination raises as to the possibility of com-
munion in their solitudes. But we must go more into
detail, ""and travel beyond Egypt before we can

214 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

understand how, and how often, the solitaries
received the Holy Eucharist.

Besides Egypt, the chief countries into which the
monastic movement spread in the East were the
peninsula of Arabia, Palestine, Syria, and Mesopo-
tamia. In all these countries there were great
varieties in the mode of living of the solitaries.*
It may be stated, however, generally, that they
may be classed into cenobites and hermits, and that
the former class is susceptible of many subdivisions.
By cenobites I mean all those who in any sense lived
together; and these may be subdivided into three
varieties, the convent, the laura, and the desert.
In each case it is easy to show how their com-
munions were managed.

The conventual solitaries were really monks of
the same kind as the Benedictines and Cistercians
in the West.Take, for instance, the largest Egyptian
order, that of St Pacomius. They had not, indeed,
the same strong organization and complete system
as the monks of St Benedict or St Bernard, but,
like them, they lived under the same roof, ate at the
same table, and received the sacraments in the same
church. This was the most numerous of the Eastern
orders. From its first convent, not far from the

* It seems to me that a clear distinction should be drawn be-
tween the conventual fathers and those who lived in what I have
called a desert. Very probably most of the inhabitants of deserts
ultimately became collected into convents. But this did not take
place till after the times of which I am writing. St Jerome, for
instance, found Nitria precisely in the position which I describe.
See an important passage in Marin, 2, 309. His distribution is
really the same as mine. His cenobites are my conventuals, his
hermits are my dwellers in the desert and the laura, and his
anchorites are my hermits. For most of the facts concerning the
Fathers of the Desert, I am indebted to Marin's admirable " Vies
des Peres des Deserts."

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 215

ruined Tentyris, in Tabenna, the Isle of Palms,
where the angel appeared to St Pacomius as he was
cutting reeds, the order spread to the Canopic
mouth of the Nile, where a monastery existed, in a
place once infamous as Corinth or Cyprus, and so
proverbially riotous, that Seneca had said that a
man who wished for peaceful solitude, would never
seek Canopus. There were 1400 monks in Tabenna
alone, without reckoning the nuns on the opposite
bank of the Nile. The saint himself founded nine
houses, and St Theodore afterwards added four of
men and one of women. Here, then, we can account
for a vast number of religious ; we know that few of
them were ordained priests, yet that they had
churches of their own, to which priests were attached
who said Mass, and gave communion every Saturday
and Sunday to the monks, and every Sunday to the
nuns.

Let us now turn to those who lived in a desert.
The readers of Rosweide and Marin must have
observed that the monks are classified according to
different deserts which they inhabited. In this con-
nexion a desert means a lonely spot in a wilderness
where a number of solitaries lived, dotted about in
separate huts, yet more or less connected together,
being at a short distance from each other, and
generally under the spiritual direction of one or more
fathers who had obtained influence by their sanc-
tity. Of course, the first requisite for such a desert is
the possibility of living in it. It was either some
wady, sheltered from the sand, or some gorge in a
range of rocky hills, or some island in the Nile. Of
these the principal were Nitria, Scetis, Diolcos, and

216 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

Saint Anthony's mountain, apparently in a district
called Porphyritis, about eighteen miles from the
Red Sea. Let us pay a visit to Nitria, the formation
of which is as well known as any. About forty miles
from Alexandria is a gloomy valley now called Wady
Natroon, or the vale of natron. It contains eight
melancholy lakes or pools, which, partially drying
up in summer, leave a thick incrustation, some of
salt, others of natron. This unpromising abode is
said to be all that remains of a wide sea which once
rolled its waters over the great desert of Sahara.
The ground is so impregnated with salt, that nothing
grows there but bulrushes and stunted palms,
reduced to the size of bushes. There are obscure
traditions of a St Fronto who lived here as early as
a.d. 150, but the saint who really peopled the
desert was Amon, who lived in the time of St
Athanasius. Hither he came while St Anthony was
still living, and disciples soon clustered around him.
They had at first hard work to live. We hear of one
who bored through the barren soil to find a well, and
at last came upon water so thoroughly impreg-
nated with saline particles, that you might almost
as well have drunk the salt sea. Yet for thirty years
he went on drinking from this unrefreshing well.
At another time eighty monks set to work to dig
for water ; they worked for three days and found
nothing. At last St Pior, this very monk who had
contented himself with the brackish well, came to
look at them under the hot mid-day sun, clad in his
sheep-skin, and kneeling down in the deep pit, he
prayed, and struck the ground with a pickaxe, and
out gushed the clear sweet water. In time colonies

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 217

spread out into the desert. The sides of the ravine
where Anion lived, were honeycombed with cells,
and there was no more room. In this way it was that
gradually the solitude was invaded, and the monks
formed themselves into convents under the rule of
St Macarius, like those we have described. What,
however, I wish principally to point out is, that
from the earliest times we find a church in the
wilderness. Even when old Abbot Pior was young,
he already found a church there. We are able in the
neighbouring desert to assist as it were at the build-
ing of the church. St Macarius had formerly been a
hermit near a village.There a wicked woman accused
him of injuring her. The calumny was believed, yet
Macarius pitied her. He worked night and day to
support her, and said to himself : Well, Macarius, you
have now got a wife and you must work for her!
Afterwards his innocence was proved, and men saw
from his benign kindness and humility that he was
a saint. He fled far into the Libyan desert of Scete
beyond Nitria, and disciples began to flock to him.
They had as yet no church; so he travelled fifteen
weary days and nights across the waste wilderness,
and over the Nile, to find St Anthony. One thing
about which he consulted him was, whether he
should build a church, and we know the saint's
answer, for, soon after he came, a church rose up in
the desert among the scattered cells of the monks.
Afterwards, as the desert grew, there were as many
as four churches at Scete raising themselves con-
spicuously up amidst the hospital, the corn mills,
and the other buildings of the place.

It is evident, then that the church in which the

218 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

holy mysteries were celebrated was considered as
indispensable in what we have called the deserts as
in the convents. What is more to our purpose, we are
expressly told that the church at Nitria was used
solely for Mass and Communion, and not for the
chanting of the office. We also know that the 5000
monks of that desert assembled to receive the Holy
Communion every Saturday and Sunday, and that
to express their joy they then covered their usual
black habit with a clean white linen garment. The
same thing is incidentally told us of the monks of
Scete, and that the same two days were set apart
for their communions.

We can evidently have no doubt as to the practice
of the monks of Egypt. We can, therefore, pass on
from the desert to the inhabitants of the laura. Here
the solitaries take another shape. Instead of being
dotted all over the face of the wilderness, they dwell
indeed in separate cells, but far closer together, and
all surrounded by a wall. To find the laura we quit
the banks of the Nile, and cross over to the Holy
Land. We are still among the Fathers of the Desert,
yet evidently the word has a very different signifi-
cation than when we had the wide expanse of the
great African wilderness before us. It seems that the
deserts of the New Testament simply mean a lonely
place, or uncultivated wild. The bare limestone hills
between Jerusalem and Jericho were a desert; and
the same name was applied to the wild ravine of the
Kedron, where is still the convent of Mar-Saba; to
the jungle in the valley of the Jordan, and the cliffs
of Engaddi which hang over the Dead Sea. It was in
such places that the solitaries in the Holy Land

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 219

dwelt, never at any great distance from the inhabited
country. In their language a highland moor, or even
Salisbury plain, would be a desert; and a solitary
taking up his abode near Stonehenge, or even by the
Giant's Grave on a Sussex down, might be called a
Father of the Desert. There is, therefore, still less
difficulty in settling the question of the commu-
nions of the inhabitants of the laura than of an
Egyptian monastery. Wherever a laura is estab-
lished, we find the Patriarch of Jerusalem coming to
consecrate the church. Hardly has St Euthymius
established himself on Mount Quarantana than he
sets up an altar in his oratory. In the laura which he
afterwards built in another place Mass was said
every day. In that of St Gerasimus, in the valley of
the Jordan, we are expressly told that the monks
communicated every Saturday and Sunday. The
same thing is said of St Sabas, who set apart a large
cavern for the church of his monastery, and there
again Mass was offered up on Saturday and
Sunday.

With the monks of the laura we may now close
our accounts of the cenobites of the desert; and
while we have no difficulty in deciding that they did
communicate, we cannot also help coming to the
conclusion that in general they did not receive the
Holy Communion more than once or twice a week.
I know of but one exception of any note, and that is
in the case of St Apollo, who lived near Hermopolis,
at the foot of a mountain where the Holy Family is
said to have taken up its abode for some time during
its sojourn in Egypt. The spirit of the Infant Jesus
seems to have passed into this beautiful, joyous

220 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

saint. Every day at three o'clock in the afternoon
his monks assembled to receive Holy Communion,
and then went to break their fast. With this excep-
tion I believe I am right in saying that the Fathers
of the Desert communicated either only on Sunday,
or on Saturday and Sunday.

Such were the monks of the ancient Church of St
Athanasius and St Basil. They fled away from that
old, wicked, Roman world, which was so rotten that
the infusion of Christianity itself could hardly mend
it; which was good for nothing but to be broken up
for burning by the sword and battle-axe of Goth and
Hun. But beyond these, further on in the waste
howling wilderness, were men who were not content
with giving up the world for Christ's sake. The
cenobite had given up wife and children and all the
ties which wind so closely around the heart of man ;
but there was still some pleasure in dwelling with
brethren in a monastery or a laura. The convent
became a second home, and there were some who
wished to give up even that for Christ. It was no
rash impulse that drove them on, or, if it was, they
soon came back, scared from the real wilderness and
its solemn silence, broken only by the howls of its
hyenas and the sullen roar of the lions, who might
pay a visit to his cave. He would soon long for his
quiet bed, his old companions, and their well-known
chants. But when the desire had remained long in
the mind, and the abbot, perceiving that it was a
real vocation to a higher state of contemplation,
bade the monk God speed, then he walked forth into
the terrible desert till he found some cavern or some
ravine where he could build a hut. It is of these her-

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 221

mits that the question has chiefly been raised, how
they managed, to communicate. Did they make a
sacrifice of the Blessed Sacrament as well as of
all the rest ? A few considerations will decide the
question.

It is so incredible that a large body of holy men
should have given up the Holy Communion that
nothing should make us believe it, except positive
proof that they did not communicate, or else of the
absolute impossibility of their doing so. There are
numberless proofs that their devotion to the
Blessed Sacrament was like that of a medieval or a
modern saint. Abbot Pcemen bids his monks come to
their weekly communion like thirsty harts to the
water -brooks. Carelessness about communion was
looked upon as a mark of tepidity in the desert, and
the abstaining from it as a proof of illusion, which
was punished by dreadful judgements. The doctrine
of the abbots in their conferences is precisely that of
modern books ; and Thomas of Jesus, the Carmelite
mystical writer, cites St Macarius to prove a peculiar
opinion on the effect of Holy Communion.* The
same kind of miracles with respect to the Blessed
Sacrament occur amongst them, as we read of in
the case of modern saints. f St Euthymius' face
shone like St Philip's as he said Mass ; St Macarius
saw a light play around Abbot Mark when he com-
municated. St Arsenius tells a story of the infant
Jesus appearing in the Host to one who thought
that it was but the figure of the Body of Our Lord.
Since the Fathers of the Desert had this vivid
feeling about the Holy Eucharist, nothing but the

* De Orat. Div. 4, 28. f Rosweide, 636.

222 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

impossibility of receiving it should be considered as
a valid proof that they lived without it. Whenever
it was possible for them to receive it, we may safely
suppose that they did. Now, what was the state
of the case ?

First, it was very rarely that they wandered away
from the convent, laura, or desert, so far as to pre-
clude their going to the church at regular times. It
did not require to go very far into the desert in order
to be alone, and we find from innumerable instances,
that, except in rare cases, the hermits made a point
of being near enough to be within reach of the sacra-
ments. Take, for instance, the desert of Cells, which
may be considered as the hermitage of that of
Nitria. It was founded by St Anthony, who led from
the Nitrian valley a party of cenobites who wished to
live as hermits. They walked on for twelve miles till
the sun set over the wide desert. Then he planted a
cross and bade them settle there. Not only could
they thus occasionally have gone to Nitria, but we
find that they had a church of their own to which
they went to communicate every Saturday and
Sunday. One of the hermits in this desert was, we
are told, five miles from the church, yet he arrived
regularly on the appointed days with the others.
St Anthony had to walk three days and three nights
into the desert to reach his mountain, yet he used to
visit his monastery of Pispir at intervals of fourteen
to twenty days. In almost every case where we find
an instance quoted which might make us suppose
that the hermit could not communicate, we find
further on that he did. Abbot Mark, for instance,
remained shut up thirty years in his cell without

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 223

ever leaving it. We wonder how he received the
sacraments, and we find that a priest went to say
Mass for him every Sunday. Abbot Moses, the negro
saint and converted robber, though he lived so far
in the desert that he was seven days' journey from
the inhabited country, yet had a church sufficiently
near him to go there every Sunday to communion.
Abbot John lived for three years on a bare rock
without a covering in a most lonely desert, yet a
priest comes to say Mass for him every Sunday.
Abbot Paphnutius was six miles from the Church at
Scete, yet at the age of ninety he used to walk to
communion every Saturday and Sunday. I must
not, however, take all my instances from Egypt
alone. Saint John Climacus does not find Mount
Sinai sufficiently solitary; his new cell is five miles
from Justinian's church, yet he goes there to com-
munion every Saturday and Sunday. In the valley
of the Jordan a hermit lives for fifty years alone, yet
continues to communicate three times a week. St
Auxentius lives in a wild mountain, near Chalcedon :
his cell is in a wooden hut within a cavern. He
exhorts all hermits who come to him to communi-
cate on Sunday. He himself says Mass on Sunday,
and some nuns who are under his direction come to
his cavern to assist at it. St Zeno lives in a tomb in
Syria, yet goes to church on Sunday to communion.
So does a hermit who has taken up his abode in a
cliff overhanging the gulf of Issus in Cilicia.

If there was any one phase of monastic life in
which we should expect to find some uncatholic
practice with respect to the Holy Communion it
would be in Syria and Mesopotamia.lt is remarkable

224 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

that in no other parts of the ancient world do we
find any false mysticism amongst the monks. Not
even the sojourn in the wild, silent desert turned the
brain of the Egyptian hermits, or produced
amongst them a deluded kind of prayer. There is
some anthropomorphism, but not a vestige of
anything approaching to quietism. All about them,
all their sayings and their actions, breathe the
spirit of discretion and good sense, which St
Anthony taught was the first of monastic virtues.
This has been probably with reason ascribed to the
prominence given in their rules to manual labour.
In Syria and Mesopotamia, on the contrary, the
case is widely different. You there find heresies on
the subject of prayer, like that of the Euchites or
Messalians. You also find for the first time startling
modes of life, pillar-saints and hermits burrowing in
pits under ground.

With this tendency to error in the race from
which he sprung, one would have expected to find
marks of fanaticism about St Simeon Stylites. Yet
no one has less about him of the arrogance or
obstinacy of delusion. He comes down from his
pillar at a word of advice from the neighbouring
monks. He casts away the chain that bound him at
the suggestion of a visitor. Above all, the good
which he effected marks him out as an apostle.
There is something wonderful in the apparition of
this man, with beautiful face and bright hair, raised
up on high, night and day adoring God. He stands
in the same relation to the saints of the solitary
desert, that the Dominicans do J to* the cloistered
Benedictines or Camaldolese. Not in the desert, but

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 225

in the vicinity of vast wicked Antioch,* he stands on
his pillar and he preaches. Once he grew weary of
the streams of people who were continually flocking
from all parts of the world, even from distant
Britain, to hear him; he bade the monks shut up the
enclosure round his column, because he wished to be
alone with God. At night a troop of angels came and
threatened him for quitting the post assigned to him
by God. He began again at once his weary work.
For thirty- seven years his sleepless eyes looked down
with pity and compassion on the crowds who came
to consult him. Cheerfully, and with temper un-
ruffled by the burning heat, or the pitiless pelting of
the mountain storms, he listened to all and con-
soled them. From three o'clock in the afternoon till
set of sun he preached from that strange pulpit to
the most motley congregation ever assembled to
hear the Word of God. Wild Bedouin Arabs,
mountaineers from the highlands of Armenia, and
from the cedars of Lebanon, banditti from the
Isaurian hills, blacks from Ethiopia, were mingled
there with perfumed counts of the East, and pre-
fects of Antioch with Romanized Gauls and Span-
iards. The Emperor Marcian was once among his
audience. Even the objects of St Chrysostom's
indignant eloquence, the ladies of Antioch, who
never deigned to set their embroidered slippers on
the pavement of the city, quitted the bazaar and
their gilded palanquins to toil up the mountains,
to catch a glimpse of the saint outside the enclosure,
within which no woman entered. Wicked women

* His mountain was forty-five miles from Antioch, but easily
accessible.

226 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

looked from a distance on that strange figure, high
in air, with hands lifted up to heaven and body
bowing down with fear of God ; and they burst into
an agony of tears, and then and there renounced
their sins for ever. Thousands of heathens were con-
verted by his preaching; and an Arab chief, him-
self a pagan, ascribed it to him that under their
tents there were Christian bishops and priests. The
savage persecution of the Christians in Persia was
stopped by respect for his name. Many a wrong did
he redress, for tyrants trembled at his threats;
many a sorrow did he soothe. A wonderful sight was
that long, painful life of suffering and supernatural
prayer, in the midst of that vast corrupt and
effeminate East. The last hour of the old world had
struck. Rome was twice sacked in his day. The old
saints of the Eastern Church were passing away.
St Gregory Nazianzen died the year after he was
born, St Chrysostom fifteen years before he
mounted his place of penance. HehadseenNestorius
filling the chair of Constantinople, and though he
witnessed the victories of the faith at Ephesus and
Chalcedon, and assisted its triumph by his influence
with successive emperors, yet the violence of the
Latrocinium was a prelude of the coming time when
the great patriarchal throne was soon to be stained
with murder and usurpation. Heresy was eating like
a canker into the noble churches of Asia, and turn-
ing the monks into what they soon became,
ignorant fanatics. From the height of his column,
St Simeon could see the glory fading from the
degenerate East, and God set him up on high in that
strange guise to be its last chance of repentance.

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 227

Such was St Simeon ; yet we cannot help asking
nervously, whether, living as he did in this strange
way, he could receive the Holy Communion. If ever
it was likely to be true of a saint that he had a diffi-
culty about the reception of the Holy Eucharist, it
would surely be in the case of one who lived on a
column forty feet high. Yet, in the case of no monk
is there clearer evidence of communion than in that
of the pillar saints.* Indeed, St Ephrem's testimony
is clear even in the case of the wildest hermits of
Mesopotamia. There were some called shepherds
who led a wandering life, never putting their head
beneath a roof, and lying down to rest wherever
night found them; yet we know that they went to
Mass and constantly communicated. Some lived in
a cell, of which they walled up the door, and which
they never quitted ; yet we incidentally hear of one
of them that he used to receive the Holy Com-
munion through a window. Of all the pillar saints it
is recorded that they communicated. Of one, in
Cilicia it appears that he had the Holy Communion
with him on his column. A story is told of St
Simeon the Elder in which a bishop mounts on a
ladder and communicates him.f He had com-
municated every day before he ascended his pillar,
and could not exist without the Blessed Sacrament.
We know that St Theodulus communicated every
Sunday. St Simeon the Younger was miraculously
communicated, became a priest, and said Mass on
his pillar. St Daniel the Stylite of Constantinople,

* For these various facts, vide Bollandists, May 28, p. 766; May
24, pp. 323, 389. Marin, Books 8, 9.

f There is some ambiguity in the word Koivcwia in Evagrius,
lib. 1, c. 1 3, but the fact of Communion is clear independently of it.

Q2

228 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

whose pillar overlooked the Bosphorous, was also a
priest. Thus in the most improbable cases we have
record of the fact that the monks received the Holy
Eucharist.

Finally, we must not forget the facility with
which the Church at that time allowed the faithful
to carry the Blessed Sacrament with them. There
are rare instances of hermits living at great dis-
tances from the churches of the monasteries, yet
almost in every case there are reasons for thinking
that they were not inaccessible to the Sacraments.
St Arsenius is said to have been thirteen leagues
from a church, yet a few pages further on we find
him in church with the other monks. An old hermit
lives forty miles from the church of Scete, yet
Cassian goes to see him. Another lives eighteen
miles away, yet two boys are sent to him with pro-
visions. It was rare, indeed, that they were so cut
off from the other hermits, that they could not
either take the Blessed Sacrament themselves from
church, or receive a provision of it at the hands of
others. St Basil expressly tells us, that the hermits
took the Holy Eucharist with them into the desert.
Even when the inhabitants of a laura dispersed, as
they did during Lent, into the desert, they took the
Blessed Sacrament with them, and communicated
twice a week, as we know from the case of St Sabas.
The Emperor Justinian built the fortress monas-
tery of Sinai, because the Saracens burnt the
habitations of the hermits with the Blessed Sacra-
ment in them. I know but of one instance on record
where it is said expressly that a saint did not
receive the Holy Communion for a long time toge-

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 229

ther, and that is St Mary of Egypt. She communi-
cated at the church of St John Baptist, before she
crossed the Jordan and plunged into the desert, and
thence only once more, when Abbot Zosimus gave
her Our Lord's Body and Blood before she died. In
some very rare cases we may conjecture it, as, for
instance, in that of the two naked monks, found by
St Macarius on an island in the midst of a marsh,
and who had not seen a human being for forty years.
St Chrysostom also speaks of hermits who only
communicated once in the year, or even once in two
years. Yet over against such instances of these, we
must set that of St Onophrius, who lived far in the
desert for seventy years, and who received Holy
Communion every Sunday at the hands of an angel.
The saint informed Paphnutius that angels also
communicated other hermits. We may therefore
conjecture that St Paul, and the nameless virgin
who lived for seventeen years unseen by man in the
desert, whither she had fled to preserve her chastity,
were communicated in the same way.*

On the whole, we may conclude that no fact in
history is better proved than that the Fathers of the
Desert did communicate, and also that they com-
municated in general once, or at most twice a week,
at a time when the faithful in the world received the
Holy Communion three or four times a week, or even
every day.

This is already a fact in the history of com-
munion which is worth noticing. We must not put
upon it more than it can bear, but this much, at
least, I think we may say : In the fourth century of
* Marin, 7, c, 10,

230 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

the Church, and the beginning of the fifth, good
Christians in the world who were most exposed to
danger and temptation, communicated oftener than
those who were more holy than they. This, however
you account for it, seems to me to be made out.
Now, let us examine what seems to me also true ; in
the time when the Church was most powerful and
brilliant, communions were fewest. A consideration
of the history of the Blessed Sacrament in the
Middle Ages will show what I mean.

It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to say
when the old discipline of the Church went out, and
Christians began to communicate very seldom.
Probably there was a great variety in different
places. I think, however, that we may say on the
whole, that good Christians still communicated once
a week down to the time of Charlemagne, that
is, the beginning of the ninth century. We found
traces of the old familiar use of the Blessed Sacra-
ment at the end of the sixth century, where two
women communicated at home. At the same time,
the fervour of Christians was evidently declining,
since the Council of Agde found it necessary to
decree that all should communicate three times a
year. From the juxtaposition of these two facts, it
would seem that, while devout Christians still
received Our Lord frequently, the world, on the
contrary, required compulsion to bring them to the
altar. At the very end of the sixth century, we know
from St Gregory the Great, that at Rome Sunday
was still a day of general communion. St Augustine,
probably, brought over this practice with him to

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 231

our country. Holy Communion must have been
already a prominent feature in the Anglo-Saxon
converts, when the pagan princes of Essex could
notice and claim from St Mellitus the white bread
which he used to distribute to the faithful, and
drove him out in consequence of his refusal. But we
find proof of it more expressly in the constitutions of
St Theodore,* Archbishop of Canterbury, at the
end of the seventh century, who enforces upon our
ancestors the custom of the Church of Rome where
the faithful, as he tells us, received Our Lord at
least every Sunday, adding, at the same time, the
important fact that, in the Eastern Church, all
clerks and laymen did so under pain of excommuni-
cation. We may believe, then, that the old devotion
to the Holy Communion still subsisted, not only in
the monasteries of St Hilda and St Etheldreda, in
the royal houses of Chertsey, Peterborough, and
Christchurch, but even in the parish churches of
old England, scattered up and down our Saxon
land.f I fear much, however, that Englishmen had
degenerated before the time of the venerable Bede,
since he complains that, in his time, even the devout
went " unhouselled " all the year except on three
great festivals, though numberless boys and girls,
youths and maidens, J of most chaste lives, and aged

* Theodore died about 690.

f English monasteries were especially fervent in the number of
their Communions. St Dunstan even prescribes daily Communion.
Indeed, the Benedictines everywhere, including probably the
Cluniacs and Cistercians, kept up the practice of weekly Com-
munion, at least, as late as the end of the twelfth century,
Martene's " Comm. in Reg. Ben.," p. 455.

I Lingard, " Anglo-Saxon Church," 325,

232 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

persons might have received the Body of Our Lord
every Sunday, and on the feasts of the holy apostles
and martyrs, as was still done at Rome.
I This was in the beginning of the eighth century,
but other churches were more devout than ours.
Down to the middle of the ninth century, we find
traces of the existence of the feeling among the
faithful, that those who led Christian lives should
communicate every Sunday. Charlemagne, in the
strongest terms, inculcates weekly communion on
the members of his vast empire. We know that his
injunctions were not in vain, from the fact men-
tioned by a contemporary writer,* that some
ignorant persons thought themselves bound to com-
municate at every Mass that they heard, even
though they were present at several in one day.
Amalarius, an ecclesiastical writer under Louis the
Debonnaire, strongly presses at least weekly
communion on all good Christians. Jonas, Bishop of
Orleans, is equally urgent for communion on all
feast days. A council of Paris urges frequent com-
munion on the Emperor Louis and his courtiers.-)*

Again, it is remarkable that the Council of Aix-la-
Chapelle, held in 836, could deplore the omission of
weekly communion as a bad custom, which had
recently crept in amongst the faithful. About the
year 860 a more significant event occurred on the
conversion of the savage Bulgarians. Wilder
neophytes never entered the Church, yet Pope
Nicholas earnestly exhorted them to communicate

* Vide " Chardon Eucharistie," c. 5.

f Vide " Thomassinus de Disc," lib. 1, p. 2, 83.

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 233

daily during Lent. If such was the custom, we may
safely infer that, during the rest of the year, com-
munions could not be so very infrequent.

From all these instances important conclusions
may be drawn. The venerable Bede enables us to
bring down the practice of weekly communion at
Rome to the beginning of the eighth century, and
there is no reason to suppose that it stopped then.
Furthermore, if the civil authority could, in the
ninth century, venture to inculcate weekly com-
munion on the faithful, we may be sure that the
consciences of Christians would bear witness to the
reasonableness of the requirement, else it would
have been impolitic and absurd. I think, then, we
may say that, at least up to the first half of the
ninth century, Christians kept the old devotion to
the Holy Communion. On the whole, then, in the
days of Clovis and Clotaire, of Brunhildis and
Fredegunda, of Charles Martel and Charlemagne,
Franks and Germans, Saxons in England, Celtic
monks in Iona,* in a word, good Christians in the
world and in the cloister, in East and West, still
preserved the notion that weekly communion was
the normal state of Christendom.

I should feel inclined to date the commencement
of the decline of frequent communion among
Christians living in the world, from the middle of
the ninth century. The voice of the Church was still
heard inculcating it, but the general coldness of the
time, caused by the disorganization of the world on
the breaking up of the empire of Charlemagne,

* Vide Brockie, " Codex Reg," torn, I, 224.

234 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

authorizes us to consider that devotion to the
Blessed Sacrament was not as great as it had pre-
viously been. It is true that the monasteries every-
where kept up the tradition of communion on the
Sunday; but when every coast was ravaged by
pagan Normans, and no inland city on a river's
bank was safe; when the Saracens had possession of
the Mediterranean, and savage hordes of wild
Magyars overran Northern Italy and Germany, the
tremendous physical suffering inflicted on Chris-
tendom left the faithful but little time for devotion.
After that began a glorious time, the veritable
Middle Ages, when for two centuries and a half
the Church ruled the world. If ever there was a
moment in the earth's history when the kingdom
of Christ was an imperial power, it was from St
Gregory VII to the beginning of the reign of
Boniface VIII. If her subjects were rebellious she
conquered them, for the very world was on her side.
Amidst the scepticism of our times, Europe seems
to look back with a melancholy regret to the glorious
Ages of Faith, to its own brief period of belief. Yet,
strange to say, this was the very time when com-
munions were few and far between. The culminating
point of the medieval splendour of the Church is
the fourth Lateran Council. Not at Nicsea itself was
there a more august representation of the Christian
world. East and West were there reunited under the
See of St Peter. More than four hundred bishops
there swore fealty to Innocent III, while kings and
emperors vied with ecclesiastics in their professions
of allegiance. Yet it was precisely then, when the

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 235

world was at her feet, that the Church was com-
pelled to enact penalties against her children who
did not communicate once a year, and to limit her
commands to an Easter Communion, because she
durst not require more.

But this is not what is most striking in the case.
In former ages the Church required three com-
munions a year, but, in point of fact, the faithful
communicated far oftener. For instance, while the
Council of Agde only commanded then three com-
munions, we know that, in the same century, a
whole ship-load of sailors landed on a Sunday,
because they would not miss their weekly com-
munion.* But in the Middle Ages, even the devout
communicated very seldom. It might be said that
the Fathers of the Lateran Council only required an
average of one communion a year, because of the
rudeness and ignorance of the rough warriors with
whom they had to do. With all his virtues, a
crusader could hardly be said to be an interior man.
They went through the world, taking and giving
blows, fighting and battling all their lives long,
those great, simple-hearted, grown-up children;
and, like children, they were not allowed to com-
municate often, because they were too volatile and
too ignorant to appreciate what they did. This is
what might be said, and it is true, of the generality
of the men of the time ; but it will not account for
the infrequent communions of the religious orders,
and, above all, of the saints. Let us put together
a few facts, to make our meaning clear.

* Bollandists, January, torn, u, p. 446.

V

236 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

There can be no safer way of estimating the views
of medieval saints with respect to communion, than
to see how often they required their religious to
communicate by their rules.In all cases we shall find
their ideas on the subject very different from ours.
Take, for instance, the only genuine English order
that ever was established, that of Sempringham
instituted by St Gilbert, in the twelfth century. *
According to his rule, the lay-brothers only com-
municated^eight times a year. To counterbalance
this, I know of but one instance of more frequent
communion at that time. A poor English girl, an
ecstatica, of the diocese of Durham, was allowed to
receive Our Lord every Sunday. f There may be
isolated cases of this sort, but they cannot outweigh
the fact of the infrequent communion of a whole
religious order. If there was one saint more than
another in whose institute you would expect that
love would take the place of fear, it would be that of
St Francis. Yet, here you find the same infrequency.
There is a letter of the saint's extant, in which he
only allows one priest of his order a day in each con-
vent to say Mass.} At least, you would suppose that
this severity would be relaxed for the nuns of St
Clair ; yet, according to his rule the sisters only com-
municate six times a year, and go to confession

* Brockie, " Cod. Reg.," torn, n, 503.

t Bollandists, February, torn. 11, 102.

j See his Works, p. 94. The saint, indeed, recommends frequent
Communion to the faithful, but " frequent" is a relative term,
and must be interpreted by the practice of his time, and his own
views elsewhere expressed. Brockie, iii, 40.

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 237

twelve.* Again, the cloistered Dominicanesses are
only allowed communion fifteen times a year, pro-
vided they can find confessors to hear them as
of ten. | There are, indeed, isolated instances of
rather more frequent communion, as in the case of
the sisters of St Mary of Humility, who are com-
manded by Urban IV to communicate once a fort-
night, and in Lent and Advent every Sunday; J
but this is an exception, occurring in a small con-
gregation, and cannot outweigh the practice of the
far more numerous and important orders of St
Francis and St Dominic. Another safe standard to
ascertain the number of communions of the devout
is the rule of the third orders. They consisted of
those who, though living in the world, yet did their
best to serve God in a perfect way. They were the
very elite of the laity; yet the brethren and sisters
of the third order of St Dominic, by their rule, only
communicated four times a year. Another remark-
able instance is that of St Louis. If he had lived now
you may be sure he would have communicated every
day. His austere life, his deep conscientiousness, the
generous self-devotion with which he risked all in
the crusades for the love of Christ; all this would
surely have entitled him to receive the Blessed

* This, of course, is the minimum, and it may be that individuals
communicated oftener. Yet, what should we say to such a mini-
mum in our day ? The Council of Trent orders double that num-
ber of Communions, but even that appears little to us. Brockie,
" Cod. Reg.," iii, 34.

f Brockie, " Cod. Reg.," iv, 132.

I Garampi, " Memoire della B. Chiara de Rimini," p. 516.

238 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

Sacrament more frequently than his contem-
poraries. Yet, he who declared that the only
measure of the love of God was to love without
measure, was treated in such a niggardly way by his
confessor that his ordinary number of communions
was six times a year.* Later on in the century, St
Louis of Toulouse, f when a layman, only received
Our Lord on the principal festivals, and St
Elizabeth of Portugal three times a year. J A modern
devout person would not be satisfied at being put
on such an allowance as that.

What can be the reason of the scanty com-
munions of the Middle Ages ? Surely Godfrey de
Bouillon and the brave men who won back Jerusa-
lem, and wept tears out of their simple hearts over
the cold stone where Christ was laid, deserved to
receive His Body oftener than a modern layman.
To us it is a mystery which I am scarcely prepared
to solve; yet this much we may aver certainly —
if their needs had been as great as ours, the saints of
those days would have urged them to more frequent
communion. They had then fewer impediments on
the way to heaven ; even the world was less poison-
ous and sins less malicious. At all events, whether
my theory is right or not, such is the fact. There was
less danger and there were fewer sacraments. This
will be made more apparent still, if it appears that
simultaneously with the period when the Middle

* Bollandists, August, torn, v, p. 581. " Ut minimum" is the
expression of his biographer; on which the Bollandists observe,
" Id pro tempore videbatur frequenter communicare/'

■f Bollandists, August, torn, in, p. 809.

\ Bollandists, July, torn. 11, p. 181.

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 239

Ages give place to modern times, a more systematic
struggle appears in the Church for frequent com-
munion.

Then came two terrible centuries, most difficult to
characterize, the fourteenth and the fifteenth. The
world had lost in a great measure the supernatural
principles of the Middle Ages, and had not attained
to the Pelagian virtues of modern times. I should
call them the most unprincipled centuries of the
Christian era. In the fourteenth, Rome is desolate
and the Popes are at Avignon, and the great
schism begins. In the beginning of the fifteenth the
great schism continues to afflict the Church ; France
is suffering horrors at the hands of the English ; then
comes the time of God's vengeance on England, and
of the Wars of the Roses ; while the last years of the
century are disgraced by Caesar Borgia. Such is the
public aspect of those two hundred years; now let
us try to look into the hearts of the suffering souls
who were trying to serve God during this awful
time. I believe that a dispassionate study of the
devotional history of the time will lead us to the
conclusion that the Holy Spirit was ever striving to
introduce the frequentation of the sacraments,
while He was ever frustrated by the coldness and
indifference of men. I form this opinion from the
altered tone of the advice given by the saints and
holy men of the time with respect to Holy Com-
munion ; and also from the increasing desire for the
Blessed Sacrament in the saints, a desire often
miraculously satisfied in spite of the opposition of
men. No attentive reader of the records of the time

240 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

can fail to perceive that the Holy Communion
occupies a place in the practical teaching of the
fourteenth, which it did not in the twelfth or thir-
teenth century. Let us now attempt to trace the
history of this struggle.

Things seem to have come to their worst in the
thirteenth century. Even the Benedictines and their
offshoots, who had been faithful to their old rule of
communion every Sunday, now began to relax.
They required a decree of the Council of Vienne to
compel them to communicate once a month.* In a
Cistercian monastery, we find that the novices only
communicated three times a year, and it required a
divine punishment to compel the abbess to allow
St Lutgardis to communicate once a week.j- It was
far worse among those who lived in the world ; if we
take, for instance, medieval England, Sunday after
Sunday, and even Michaelmas, and All Saints, and
Christmas passed, and yet there was no communion
in many a parish church ; the altars were desolate till
Easter- day came round. Alexander of Hales tells us
that, at the beginning of the century, " on account
of the wickedness of men, they are hardly able to
communicate once a year, as they are bound to do."
Duns Scotus in his day bears precisely the same
witness to the scantiness of communion in his time.f
Towards the end of the century there are some faint

* Martene, Comment, in Reg. S. Bev., p. 454.

f Bollandists, April, torn. II, p. 182; June, torn, in, 246.

X Instances of more frequent Communions in the case of saints
are to be found, but they are rare. St Aleydis, a Cistercian nun,
and St Christina, called the Wonderful, communicated every Sun-
day. Vide Bollandists, June, torn, in, 247; July, torn, v, 654.

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 241

symptoms of amelioration in religious houses. For
instance, St Ida is allowed by the Pope to receive
every day. In the writings of St Bona venture there
are traces of better things.* Our Lord Himself
encourages the dear penitent, St Margaret of Cor-
tona, to communicate every day. But there is not a
shadow or sign of improvement in the world.|

Let us now turn to the fourteenth century. One
of the most tempest-tossed portions of the Church
of God in this fearful period was Germany; and one
of the most alarming signs of the times was the mul-
titude of strange and wild opinions which sprung
up everywhere, but especially in the Rhineland and
in Swabia. But the most startling indication of
danger to the Church is a system of Pantheism
breaking out amongst the very champions of ortho-
doxy, the great Dominican order. To extract Pan-
theism out of St Thomas might have seemed a
hopeless task; yet there was one point where a
subtle mind might wrest from their legitimate mean-
ing the words of the angelic doctor, and contrive to
merge all existence in God. It was just possible so to
interpret St Thomas's view of the utter dependence
of the creature on the Creator, and of the necessity
of God's concurrence in all our actions, into a denial
of free will, and consequently of personality. It was
precisely on the doctrine of creation that Master
Eckhart built up the doctrines which the Church
condemned in him. They have been sometimes

* He grudgingly allows lay-brothers to communicate once a
week. De Perf. Rel. ii, 77.

t On the Communions of the Middle Ages, see further, Appen-
dix G.

R

242 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

traced to the teaching of Scot Erigena. They appear
to me, however, to be the indigenous growth of the
time. Their speculative basis appears to have
been the least important part of them. Eckhart
seems to have been urged into Pantheism by the
universal cry of agony around him. " Unite your-
selves to God, lose yourself in Him, merge yourselves
in the great Godhead, and for that purpose remain
passive; renounce you own acts, and become
nothing as you really are;" such was Eckhart's
answer to the cries of despair addressed to him by
souls who felt the strong foundation on which they
had relied trembling under them, and knew not
what to do. He was no dreaming solitary or un-
practical Schoolman ; he threw himself like a brave
man into the terrible whirlpool around him, to
grasp at sinking souls and save them. He was a
great preacher, a great spiritual director, as is every
day being further brought to light by the discovery
of documents written by him to the nuns who
applied to him for advice. It is easy to see how the
language of such a school of mysticism might degen-
erate into Pantheism, and, accordingly, Eckhart
was condemned by John XXII. He instantly
recanted, and in consequence of his ready sub-
mission, his influence was not much injured by his
condemnation. His tone of thought is visible in the
writings of Tauler and the Blessed Henry Suso,
though they carefully take out the sting from his
doctrines by qualifying his Pantheistic expressions.
Such was the origin of the mystical school of the
fourteenth century, the only Catholic one which, at

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 243

that time, had any real influence over Germany.
Now, it had one characteristic which has never been
noticed, and which is fully as much marked as its
language, about the absolute union of the creature
with God ; I mean its devotion to the Blessed Sacra-
ment. The movement might be called a crusade in
favour of the revival of frequent communion. It
is to be found in Eckhart as well as in Tauler, and
the strong spirit which had roused all Germany
becomes tender as a child when he speaks of the
blessed fruits of frequent communion.* From it
Tauler borrowed his devotion to the great Sacra-
ment of the Altar, and never is he more earnest than
in his exhortations to receive the Blessed Eucharist.
What is still more remarkable, he entreats his
hearers to communicate often, especially on account
of the dangers of the times, and their own great
weakness. In his sermon, for instance, on the Feast
of the Exaltation of the Cross, in addressing a con-
vent of Dominican nuns, he expresses himself not
satisfied with the custom of communicating once a
fortnight which prevailed then.f He urges more
frequent communion, and says: "I, for my part,
with my whole heart and soul entreat and desire
that this most holy practice may not decrease or
grow languid in this most perilous time; for men's
natures are not now so strong as they were. A man

* The long Chapter XXXIX on the Holy Eucharist, in Tauler's
Institutes, is really Eckhart's. It is published in the new collection
of German mystics, by Pfeiffer, p. 373. Vide also p. 565.

f Tauler, in the same sermon, claims for the Dominican order
the constant practice of frequent Communion. Certainly Com-
munion once a fortnight would have been considered very frequent
in the preceding century.

r2

244 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

must cling to God with all his might, or he will fall.
Time was when such struggles were not necessary;
it was well once to go to communion once a fort-
night. That was enough for the perfection and
sanctity of that time, when men were stronger than
now, and such rare communion was not so hurtful as
it would be now to our most feeble nature, which is
much more inclined to evil than formerly." It was
not only within the cloister that he spoke thus. He
implies in another place that even those who are
married may communicate every day if they are fit.*
Again, he expresses his willingness in a remarkable
passage to give frequent communion to a repentant
sinner. After declaiming against tepid communions,
he goes on: " If a man wishes to be good and avoid
occasions of sin, he is to be commended for com-
municating every week; I, for my part, if I saw a
most foul sinner really penitent for his sins, and
converted to God, I would more willingly give him
communion daily for six months than to those
tepid men, for I believe that, in this way, I should
by degrees extinguish sin in him."j*

Tauler's crusadef was certainly successful in in-
troducing frequent communion into the Rhineland.
At the end of the century it was taken up by a more
distinguished Dominican. During the horrible days
of the great schism, when the minds of good Chris-
tians were more at sea than ever they were since
Christendom existed, Our Lord in His mercy raised

* Serm. 2, on Corpus Christi.
f Serm. 1, on Corpus Christi.

I In Serm. 4, on Corpus Christi, he says that Communion was
frequent at Cologne.

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 245

up St Vincent Ferrer, one of the most wonderful of
saints, to console His faithful ones. Throughout the
length and breadth of Europe he went, converting
sinners. But the most remarkable instance of his
power was the company which he formed, and
which followed him everywhere. Thousands of men
and women accompanied him wherever he went, and
he formed them into a vast society with peculiar
rules. It was most wonderful, in the midst of that
corrupt and wicked generation, to see so large a
body, made up of such dangerous elements, going
from one large city to another with all the order and
discipline of an army. There were amongst them
penitents who had committed the foulest sins,
pirates who had scuttled ships on the high seas,
robbers, assassins, and dealers in the black art,
converted Turks and Jews, and abandoned women,
the very scum of the great towns in Europe, all
lately won by the saint from Satan to Christ. All
nations were represented there; all ranks, from the
noble to the serf. Yet, amidst the vast company, a
scandal was unknown. Men wondered how the saint
could rule them, but we cease to wonder when we
know that it was one of St Vincent's rules that the
whole company should communicate at least once a
week, and at all great festivals. The saint's great
instrument of conversion was the Word of God;
his rule for perseverance was frequent communion.
St Vincent died, but a third Dominican took up
his work. The world was a bad world when the
saint died in 1419, at Vannes, but it had become far
worse when Savonarola began to preach at Florence,

246 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

as the wicked century was verging to its close. The
abomination of desolation was standing in holy
places, but the brave friar began his crusade un-
dauntedly. Instead of appealing to fragments from
Aristotle and Seneca, backed by quotations from
Ovid's Metamorphoses, as was the wont of preachers
then, he spoke of the Blessed Name of Jesus, and of
His love to us in the Holy Eucharist. His success
was even greater than that of Tauler at Cologne.
The Blessed Sacrament was enthroned king of
Florence. Every day at St. Mark's, says his
biographer, was like Easter morning.* At first he
durst only recommend to the multitude communion
four times a year, but the plague breaks out, and
the battle with spiritual powers in high places
becomes more terrible, and he bids his children com-
municate oftener, even once a week, because
44 nothing will unite them to Christ like the Holy
Communion." Happy for him if he had confined
himself to preaching devotion to the Blessed Sacra-
ment ; his end would have been less tragic, and his
sanctity less equivocal. His awful sorrows and the
hangman's cord have probably long ago expiated
his faults, and freed him from purgatory; but his
chief title to our love will ever be that he passed on
to St Philip the tradition of frequent communion.

But while these brave hearts were struggling for
Christ in the great world, there arose others in the
cloister who were praying and suffering for Him.

During the whole of these two terrible centuries,

* Burlamacchi, p. yj. Regole del benvivere, p. 216; Ed. Quetif.
Regole, x, p. 206; Ep. xiii. p. 248.

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 247

Our Lord had expressed His desire to His spouses
in the cloister that they should communicate more
frequently than they were allowed by their spiritual
guides. Open the Revelations of St Gertrude, who
died probably in 1344,* you will find Him com-
plaining to her expressly of those who would not
allow those who were dear to Him, to receive Him
as often as they would. After her came one who had
more influence upon her contemporaries than any
woman since the beginning of Christianity, St
Catherine of Siena. No one promoted frequent com-
munion like that great saint. Not even Tauler's
fervent eloquence had the power in it which all
felt when they came into the presence of that
outwardly helpless girl. In spite of the opposition of
prelates and priests, she carried her point. Our
Lord inspired the Blessed Raymond of Capua to
allow her to communicate whenever she would, and
when once or twice the opposition of those around
her prevented her from receiving His Blessed Body,
Our Lord communicated her Himself. She had but
to say, " Father, I am hungry," and Raymond at
once said Mass to give her the Blessed Sacrament.

A few weeks before St Catherine's death there
began one of those lives of tremendous suffering
which are wont to occur above all in times of
peculiar wickedness. In 1433, in an obscure town
in Holland, there flew to heaven a soul pure as an
angel, and refined by supernatural suffering. St
Lidwina had already undergone bodily pains which

* This is the latest assignable date. The dates given vary from
1 290 to 1344.

248 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

would have furnished forth a hundred martyrdoms.
But, in addition to all this, she had to bear the hard-
heartedness and cruelty of those whose office it
should have been to console her. When she was able
to go to the church, the priest would only allow
her to receive her Lord twice a year, and when
she was stretched upon her bed of unexampled
suffering, he even then refused to bring the Blessed
Sacrament, the only possible consolation in her
incredible pains. After she had borne brutal and
public insults, Our Lord Himself interposed, and
by the miracle of a bleeding Host, compelled the
parish-priest to allow her to receive Him when she
chose.*

The same opposition and the same triumph were
visible in the case of St Catherine of Genoa, and
St Columba of Rieti. The holy firmness of St
Catherine conquered all resistance from those who
blamed her, while the sanctity of the Blessed
Columba was insufficient to procure her the Blessed
Sacrament more than once a month, and on the
Feasts of our Lady,f till Jesus Himself miraculously
brought a foreign bishop to advise her daily com-
munion.

I could instance other saints and devout persons
in and out of the cloister, who at this time com-
municated oftener than was usual, in the first half
of the thirteenth century. The Blessed Emilia was
encouraged by Our Lord Himself to communicate
every Sunday, Thursday, and Friday .J The Blessed

* Bollandists, April, torn, i, 330, 335.

f Boll., September, torn, v, 162; May, torn, v, 330, 331.

I Boll., May, torn, vn, 562.

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 249

Clara, a Beguine of Rimini, who died in 1326, com-
municated every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday,
Charles, Duke of Brittany, who was killed in battle
in 1371, did so on Sundays and all great feasts. The
Blessed Collette, the Reformer of the poor Clares,*
often received Our Lord every day for a year
together. The Blessed Baptista Varani, a poor
Clare, communicated every Sunday. And so did
the Blessed Osanna, a Dominicaness: while the
Blessed M. Bagnesi, of the same order, for twenty
years of her life received Our Lord three, four, or
even six times a week. Towards the latter end of her
life, St Francesca Romana communicated once a
week. The Blessed Galeotto Malatesta, who died
in 1432, received ordinarily every Sunday ;j" and the
Blessed Helen of Udine, tertiary of the order of
Hermits of St Augustine, who died in 1458, com-
municated every day. These instances amongst
others prove a great increase upon the preceding
period.

Such is the history of communion during these
two centuries. Our Lord was ever striving to pro-
mote among the faithful the more frequent
reception of the Blessed Sacrament, while in the
world matters were ever growing worse and worse.
The struggle between the powers of light and dark-
ness grew more fierce, and was brought to an issue
in the sixteenth century. St Ignatius and his com-
panions were nearly brought before the Inquisition

* Boll., March, torn, i, 564.

f His biography calls this very frequent Communion. For this
and other instances, vide Garampi's " Legend of Blessed Clara of
Rimini," p. 178.

250 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

for communicating once a week. One of the early
Fathers of the Oratory got himself ordained priest
because he could not obtain communion from the
priests of the time, so strongly were men of the
world set against the frequentation of the sacra-
ments by the laity.

Who was to resuscitate these dry bones, and to
infuse warmth into hearts which were arid as dust
and ashes ? " A dry, sharp wind wonder cold," like
that which the English ecstatica* describes as blow-
ing over the earth, " what time Our Blessed
Saviour died upon the rood," seemed to have
withered up the very soul of the world. All at once
in the very central seat of Christendom, as was
befitting, the fire of love broke out, and spread to
the ends of the earth. St Ignatius began the work of
restoring the general use of frequent communion
among the multitude of the faithful ; but the actual
apostolate of Rome was confided to St Philip's
hands. It was a marvellous Providence that, at the
very moment when the Pelagian spirit of modern
times was about to seize upon the world, the Holy
Ghost should stir up the preaching of a new
crusade in favour of the frequent reception of the
Sacrament of Love. No power short of that of God
could have wrought the change. Things had come to
such a pass that an opinion was commonly held that
the Church had forbidden communion more than
once a year. | Learned menj and doctors are cited as
bitter opponents of the movements. Cacciaguerra,

* The B. Juliana of Norwich, eighth revelation.

f Cacciaguerra, " Trattato della S. Communione," lib, I, c, 12,

J Cacciaguerra, " Dedication."

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 251

a companion of St Philip in the great work, says
that it was with great difficulty that souls thirsting
for the Blessed Sacrament could find priests to give
it to them. As late as 1580, when weekly com-
munion was introduced into the monastery of San
Cosimato at Rome, it was thought to be a miracle.
An author of the time says that, when ladies went to
communion, they used to begin their confession a
month beforehand.* For seven years St Philip and
Cacciaguerra underwent a persecution^ so harassing
and wearing, that the saint, in the anguish of his
heart, lifting up his eyes to the crucifix as he was
saying Mass, cried out, " O good Jesus ! why wilt
Thou not hear me ? For so long a time and with such
agony have I asked for patience, and Thou hast not
heard me?" They were delated to prelates and
cardinals, and threatened with the Inquisition.
Meanwhile in the little church of San Girolamo della
Carita a blessed work went on which was destined to
change the face of Christendom. A spectacle was
seen there, which had not been witnessed for many
a century. " There," says an eye-witness, " many
persons used to communicate, some every Sunday,
others three or four times a week, others even every
day, so that each morning looked like Easter-day."
" There every Sunday," shortly after the beginning
of the movement, " at least three hundred persons
used to approach the altar, and on week days at

* Garampi, 510, 516.

f From 1552 to 1559; it appears that the persecutions men-
tioned in Bacci, lib. i, 16, were in consequence of St Philip's move-
ment in favour of frequent Communion. Compare Marangoni's
" Life of Cacciaguerra," c. 19.

252 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

least seventy, a thing which in those times was very-
wonderful, and did not come to pass without great
tribulation for the servant of God and his com-
panions." We may estimate by this sentence how
great was the need and small were the beginnings of
that revolution which first spread through Rome,
and then was felt to the end of the Catholic Church.
We feel it to this day. Those seventy communicants
were the nucleus of millions of communions. What
St Catherine of Siena spent her life in preaching,
what Tauler, St Vincent Ferrer, and Savonarola
fought for, St. Philip brought to pass. To counter-
balance the fearful dangers which encompass us
since the Reformation, the Holy Spirit inspired the
saint to inaugurate a movement in favour of
frequent communion, which from that day to this
has never ceased.

And now, after this long review of the history of
communion in the Church, what are the conclusions
to which we may fairly come ? I think we may be
said to have arrived at three.

First, of the eighteen centuries of the existence of
the Church, there were only four, the tenth, eleventh,
twelfth, and thirteenth, during which infrequent
communion reigned, without a visible movement
against it among persons living in the world. I con-
clude from this that frequent communion is the
normal state of the Church.

Secondly, this conclusion is still further strength-
ened, when we remember that, up to the end of the
twelfth century, in all monasteries under the Bene-
dictine rule, the inmates communicated every

HISTORY OF COMMUNION 253

Sunday.To appreciate the full force of this fact let us
recollect the enormous number of Benedictine,
Cluniac, and Cistercian monasteries scattered all
over Christendom. We must also reflect that devo-
tion, at that time, was nearly coincident with the
cloister. It will, therefore, reduce the time of un-
resisted infrequent communion in the case of the
devout to the thirteenth century, with the additional
drawback of symptoms of an increase in com-
munion towards the latter end of it.

Thirdly, I think it has been proved that the fre-
quency of communion is regulated, partly at least,
by the class of dangers to which the faithful are
exposed. If this is the case, then, let us avoid, in this
matter at least, imitating the Middle Ages. I say
nothing about medieval art, which I entirely put
out of the question, for I am not writing a treatise on
aesthetics. But if there be one age of the Church
more than another, the virtues and the vices, the
wants and dangers of which are utterly unlike our
own, it is the medieval time. For some time past a
notion has got abroad that the Middle Ages are the
model period of the Church of Christ. I do not think
this true, and if untrue, it is mischievous and unreal.
The times in which we live are so utterly unlike the
age of St Bernard and St Thomas that we can only
imitate its externals; and the result can only be a
sham. Our work is to deal with children of the nine-
teenth century; they are flocking into the Church
every day, and we have got to make good Cathol ics
of them, to mould good children of the Church out of
the cool, contemptuous Englishman, with habits of

254 HISTORY OF COMMUNION

rampant independent judgement and universal
criticism. It is in vain to educate them, unless you
make them devout. The problem is, how to make
them good, humble Christians. Our restless in-
tellects, however, and habits of subtle introspection,
our turbid, agitated hearts and undisciplined
feelings, can only be quieted by stronger spells than
were sufficient for our ancestors. A revival is now
taking place, full of consolation, yet full of anxiety.
To guide it, I believe the method of the primitive
Church more effectual than that of the Middle Ages.
It may seem a paradox to say so, but the age in
which we live is far more like the first ages of
Christianity than like the Church of St Gregory VII.
Surely the tone of society in which we are resembles
that of the Romans of the time of Commodus rather
than that of the Crusaders. True, there is no perse-
cution. I am far from forgetting that ; but for that
very reason the world is a hundredfold more
dangerous. What will save us from it ? Nothing but
love, and where shall we find love except in frequent
communion ?

Surely, however, you will say, danger is not the
only condition for often receiving the Blessed Sacra-
ment. Reader, I did not say that it was. There
must be a limit, and we shall by and by attempt to
ascertain it.

CHAPTER II. SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

Why did Jesus come down from heaven and be-
come man? For us men and for our salvation. If
man had never fallen, He would have descended in
another guise, and for another purpose. But we have
not at this moment anything to do with the splen-
dours of a possible Incarnation, or the order of the
Divine decrees. We have not even to consider the
many other ends which are actually fulfilled by
Our Lord's assumption of our nature, such as the
glory of His Heavenly Father. The sacraments
are the great instruments by which our actual sal-
vation, as individuals, is effected, the channels of
the precious Blood to each one of us. In treating,
therefore, of any of them, not as it is in itself, but
as it is received by us, we necessarily come across
sin and sinners. Even the most glorious Sacrament
of the Altar has to do with the destruction of sin,
and in writing on the Holy Communion we must
consider its relations to sinners. The most delicate
and difficult part of its administration has to do
with its application as a remedy for the many dis-
orders of our fallen nature. Here a priest has all
sorts of dangers to avoid; he may be rigorous or he
may be lax; and the difficulty principally lies in
the fact, that the right conduct is not an accurate
mean between two extremes. The same priest has
at times to be as severe as a judge, at other times
to be tender as a mother. The measure of the dis-
tribution of the Body and Blood of Jesus is neither
a rule of wood, nor, like Aristotle's Lesbian, one of
lead ; rather it is no rule at all, but a living spirit.

255

256 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

It can hardly be denned; it can only be described.
Happily for us, we have the Church to guide us.
In the last chapter we saw what had been the
practice of saints and holy men with respect to the
communion of the devout; we must now consider
the discipline of the Church in the distribution of
the Bread of Life to sinners.

There is an expression in frequent use among
theologians which may be set side by side with the
words of the creed which we have just quoted. Who
can hear without a thrill of joy the glorious song,
"Propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem? "
There are other words very like them which ought
to be written over every confessional in Christen-
dom, or, at least in the heart of every priest —
" Sacramenta propter homines." Nor is the juxta-
position of the two sentences at all arbitrary ; there
is a living connexion between them; the one flows
out of the other. Proclaim it aloud ; go ye unto all
nations. God has come down to earth and has
become man, for us men, and for our salvation.
He is Jesus, the Saviour. Has He then abrogated
His old laws, and dashed to earth, like His servant
of old, the tables of the decalogue? No; He came
not to destroy but to fulfil the law. The eternal
laws of God cannot lose their force; God Himself
cannot abrogate them, because He cannot cease to
be Himself. To give licence to sin would not be the
way to save mankind. Jesus Himself, therefore, is
at times severe. Has not the same voice that ab-
solved the Magdalene said also, Woe unto you, ye
hypocrites? Yet at the same time, how marvellous-

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 257

ly flexible is His conduct? See how like a serpent
is the gentle Dove in His conversation with the
woman of Samaria? He winds Himself into the
inmost recesses of that dark heart, by adapting
Himself to every turning of its labyrinths; He
glides round her prejudices, instead of breaking
through them, till at last He holds that wild, capri-
cious soul in the folds of His all-embracing love.
Just so flexible, and yet so severe are the sacra-
ments. Never rigid, even in their severity, as though
they were living things, they never forget that they
have to do with men. Now, the very characteristic
of our strange double nature is its changeableness.
It is unlike the angels, both in good and evil. It has
neither their fixedness in virtue nor their horrible
tenacity in sin; and the sacraments, which are
meant for our healing, adapt themselves in all in-
stances to our mercurial being. Whenever their
laws are stern, it is because of some reason founded
in our weakness, while their general flexibility is
owing to their being made for men, according to
the axiom which we have quoted.

Let us take, for instance, the Sacrament of
Penance. Absolution is inexorably refused in all
cases of voluntary approximate occasions of sin.
In other words, no man is judged worthy of pardon
who wilfully remains in a position where he is in
peril of committing sin, when he might avoid the
danger by breaking off the occasion. The Church
knows human nature too well to allow the feeble
child of Adam to trust himself within reach of the
tempter's net. He may protest that he will not sin,

s

258 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

but he is not made of adamant, and his will, in all
probability, will change in the presence of tempta-
tion. At all events, in such a frail creature as he,
the very wish to place himself in peril is a proof that
he does not appreciate the horror of the sin; and,
notwithstanding all his protestations, he must
break off the occasion, or go away unabsolved.
How different is the administration of the sacra-
ment with respect to the recidive ! How flexible are
the sternest laws ; how varied the application of the
wildest principles ! Never must absolution be given
unless the confessor has a moral certainty of the
firm resolve of the penitent never to sin again. Such
is the principle ; yet, let but a relapsed sinner present
himself, who is in danger of despair if he goes away
unabsolved, and the sternest theology at once un-
bends; the confessor must conditionally absolve
him, however doubtful he may be of the disposi-
tions of the penitent.* Again, theologians say that
no man is worthy of absolution who would not
rather die there and then than commit the sin
again; yet the confessor is especially warned never
to present such an alternative before the sinner;
in other words, the rule, though speculatively true,
is not applicable in practice, since it has reference
to a nature so timid and frightened at virtue as
that of man. The confessor takes refuge in the very
changeableness of the frail creature before him, to
persuade himself that there is now, at least, in the
penitent's heart, a sovereign act of detestation of

* Vide Cardinal Gousset, " Theologie Morale, Traite de la Peni-
tence," c. v, No. 473, also principles laid down, c. x, No. 555.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 259

sin, though he knows full well, by a sad experience,
that not improbably this transient act will, before
a week is out, have yielded before the demon power
of habit. He contents himself with such proofs of
the efficacious resolve of the sinner as the mere
fact of his continuing to come to confession when
there is no external call,* or a longer resistance
before falling, all which would be absurdly inade-
quate to the speculative principles laid down, if he
did not remember that he was dealing with a nature
changeable as the wind and unstable as water. Any
theology which forgot this, however logically true,
would be practically false, and any confessor who
acted upon it, would be at once a rigorist.

Rigorism, then, may be described to be the for-
getfulness of the axiom, " sacramenta propter
homines." It is not severity but inflexibility; it is
the wooden application of rules without remem-
bering how far they are to bend before varieties of
time, place, and persons. Bearing these principles
in mind, let us look for examples severally of sever-
ity and rigorism with respect to Holy Communion,
in different periods of the Church's history.

Never had the Church of God, in her wrestling
with the world, a harder task to play than in the
early ages of her existence. We know how prodigal
she was of the Blessed Sacrament to her devout
children, but what was she to do with the sinful, of
whom there were not a few ? It is a wonderful
sight to see the Church struggling with the old

* Such is the opinion of Segneri and other theologians. St
Alphonso agrees, adding " praecise — si poenitens ut accederet ad
sacramentum notabilem conatum adhibuit," lib. vi, 460.

s2

260 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

heathen world. Christians are bad enough, but
eighteen hundred years of Christianity have at
least fixed firmly in the public conscience certain
principles which not even sin can wash out. There
is one God; there are eternal principles of right
and wrong; every man has a soul to be saved or
lost. You know how to deal with men who have a
conscience. But when that very conscience has got
to be resuscitated, is it not like creating a soul
under the ribs of death? It is a spectacle worth
seeing, the sacraments at work upon such materials
as that, the crucifix making its way into that great
heathen Rome, where Nero was emperor, with
Poppcea by his side. Humanly speaking, it was not
easy to make nominal Christians of them, but it
was hard, indeed, really to Christianize the lazy
loungers who daily occupied the marble seats in
the baths of Diocletian or Caracalla, who frequented
the theatres, where obscenity had ceased to be in-
famous, and haunted the Suburra, or revelled in
the blood of the dying gladiator. While the little
flock met in the hired house of St Paul, there was
little need of casuistry, but when, long afterwards,
the majority of the twelve hundred thousand souls*
crowded into the twelve miles of wall which sur-
rounded Rome had become Christians, then, indeed,
the Church had need of all her wisdom in the ad-
ministration of the sacraments. Was she to be as
prodigal of the Holy Communion to the relapsed
sinner as to him who had kept his baptismal robe ?

* This is Gibbon's calculation. A later authority makes it two
millions, vide Conybeare and Howson, vol. n, 377.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 261

Everything proves to us that tares soon began to
grow among the wheat. The presence of heresy is
a clear proof of this ; if no miraculous interposition
of Providence preserved the Church from the
presence of heresy, if the rampant intellect of man
was allowed to exercise itself on the dogmas of
Christianity, it is not likely that Christianity should
have vanquished without a struggle the moral part
of man. Besides, of the heresies which, by the time
of St Irenseus and of Hippolytus, had sprung up in
the Church, many were accompanied by foul and
dreadful sins. The wild Cainites who worshipped
the principle of evil, were baptized Christians;
among the fifty sects of Gnostics, many disgraced
the Christian name by their vices; and while on
the distant shores of the Black Sea, Marcion was
infamous at once by his dissoluteness and his error,
the civilization of France did not preserve the
Gallic Church from such dealers in the black art as
the licentious Mark, at once a wizard and a heretic.
With all this wickedness around her, it is not won-
derful that the Church was severe. All that I main-
tain is, that even when most severe, she was never
rigid. ' ti • '

First, at no period of her existence did the
Church change her discipline with respect to sinners
so completely as in the first five centuries; never
did she adapt herself more marvellously to the
times. There is a strange superstition, for I can call
it nothing else, in the minds of men about that
early Church. It seems to be a great unknown void,
in which the imagination of man may exercise itself

262 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

at will. No man approaches it without some pre-
conceived, theory, according to which he interprets
the vague forms which he sees, or dreams he sees,
moving about in the dim morning light. One of the
strangest instances of the intrusion of prejudice
into history is the mode in which writers have
treated questions which concern the discipline of
the early Church. The purer the Church, it is argued,
the more severe it must be in punishing sin; now,
the Church was purest at its source, therefore it was
most severe. There are few of us who, some time
in our lives, have not been the victims of such
reasoning as this. Then, to help our imagination,
comes some canon of Saint Basil, condemning a
sinner to a penance of thirty years; and from the
inveterate habit which we have of flinging con-
fusedly together all that comes out of the Fathers
into that one great vague category, called the early
Church, we straightway assume that, in the first
century, sinners were treated as they were in the
fourth. The facts of the case, however, are precisely
the contrary. The Church began with lenity. More
than two centuries elapsed before she tried the
experiment of severity.* A better type of the
method of the early Church cannot be found than
that which is furnished by the case of the inces-
tuous Corinthian. How fiery is the indignation of
the great apostle ! how terribly solemn his denun-
ciation! Listen to his sentence: " In the name of
Our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered to-

* Vide Orsi. De Cap. Crim. abs., sec, I, cap. 7, 2; sec. 4; Dig. 5.
Ibid., cap. 2, 4,

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 263

gether, and my spirit with the power of Our Lord
Jesus, to deliver such a one to Satan for the de-
struction of the flesh, . . . With such an one not
so much as to eat." Yet, even at the moment that
he was writing this, all the mother in the apostle
was aroused, and he was yearning for his child.
" Out of much affliction and anguish of heart I
wrote to you with many tears." In the course of a
very few months the excommunicated man is ab-
solved. " You should rather pardon and comfort,
lest, perhaps, such an one should be swallowed up
with over-much sorrow." In the spring of a.d. 57
the excommunication was pronounced; before the
autumn leaves had fallen at Corinth, the sinner
was absolved. Who does not remember the beauti-
ful story of St John, the Apostle of Love, and the
young captain of banditti? His penance, robber,
and murderer as he was, could not have
lasted more than a few weeks, since, by the time
that the apostle's visitation was over, before he
had left the place, the penitent, as we are told,
" was restored to the Church."* And this lenity
lasted long after apostolic times. In the canons
called apostolical we meet with none of the terrible
canons and the astounding penances which startle
us in later collections. Seldom is any fixed time
assigned for penance; once mention is made of a
fast of a few weeks. As soon as the bishop saw that
the sinner was contrite, he was absolved, f It was

* Francolinus, Vet. Eccl. sev. vindicata, lib. I, disp. 9; Aposto-
lical Constitutions, lib. 2, cap. 19.

f Orsi even argues, from St Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians,
that moechi were not put to public penance in apostolic times at

264 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

not till the middle of the third century that any-
direct penitential canons were passed. Before the
time of St Gregory Thaumaturgus there were no
accurate divisions of public penitents. Previous to
that time the very longest penance on record lasted
hardly three years. It was not till the long peace
between the persecutions of Severus and Decius
had brought vast multitudes into her pale, that the
Church, as though astonished at the growing cor-
ruption, roused herself to try to strangle sin by
severity.* The taunts of Novatian heretics certainly
helped to sting some particular churches into
greater rigour, just as Jansenism imparted a certain
stately Puritanism even to the orthodox Gallican
Church. It was after that time that the Holy
Communion began to be deferred till long after
absolution, while in earlier times the absolved peni-
tent went straight to the altar to receive the Blessed
Sacrament.*)" By St Basil's times the Church attain-
ed the maximum of severity, since in the canons
which go by his name, we find express mention of
many sins for which no provision had been made
in the ancient penitential laws of earlier times. In
one place we are expressly told that he lays a pen-
ance of fifteen years upon a sin punished formerly

all until they had demonstrated their impenitence by perseverance
in sin. De Cap. Crim. abs., sec. i, cap. i, 5. For the date of the
Epistles, vide Conybeare and Howson, vol. 11, 560.

* Even Morinus, whose tendencies are rigorist, has (lib. iv, 21,
7) the following remarkable words : Referring to several places in
his book, he says: " Probatur pcenas criminibus impositas ante
Novatum breves admodum fuisse, et nonnunquam sceleratissi-
mis hominibus pacem et communionem certis de causis nulla
imposita exteriore pcenitentia statim esse redditam."

f Morinus, ibid,

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 265

by a penance of one. This severity was a forlorn
and desperate experiment, which did not last long.
Sin only increased under the pressure of the canons.
The overwhelming tide of wickedness still rolled on,
and rose higher and higher till it became a very
deluge. By the time that half of the two hundred
thousand inhabitants of Antioch* were Christians
the public penances were few and far between. The
tone of St Chrysostom's homilies is utterly incon-
sistent with the view which imagination has con-
jured up of the multitude of penitents beating
their breasts at the door of the church.There is little
said of public penance to those numerous Christians
whom his indignant eloquence pictures as feasting
their prurient curiosity on the foul spectacles of
the theatre. They are even exhorted to receive the
Holy Communion in sermons which might be
preached in a Lent retreat at Notre Dame or St
Roch to the fine ladies of modern Paris.f By the
time that he arrived at his patriarchal throne the
ancient discipline had disappeared. It could only
have been enforced on a willing people, and the
lords of the Hippodrome at Constantinople, or the
maids of honour of Eudoxia, could not with any
probability of success have been exhorted to public
penance. The saint's own character was utterly
averse to rigour. He was firm as a rock against an
impious court, but his kind heart could not stand a
sinner's tears. It is curious to find an accusation of
laxity amongst the charges preferred against him.

* Milman's note to Gibbon, c. 1 5.
f In Matt. Horn. 7.

266 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

A sudden zeal for ecclesiastical rigour seized upon
the imperial court, and the patriarch is accused of
receiving sinners and absolving them as often as
they chose to come to him.* The very office of
public penitentiary had been abolished, as we know,
under Nectarius, St Chrysostom's predecessor.
From that time the discipline of the Greek Church
had completely changed. Public penance for secret
sins no longer existed. f Absolution was pronounced
at the very beginning of public penance, and Holy
Communion deferred to the end. As for the African
Church, which, with the Greek, were the two rigid
churches of antiquity, it perished with St Augus-
tine. The barbarian trumpets were sounding around
the walls when the old saint was dying, and Gen-
seric and his Vandals put an end to its discipline
and almost to its existence.

I have spoken of some churches as rigid, for we
must never forget that, in the history of the early
Church, the category of place is to be taken into
consideration as well as that of time.J I have never
said that there was no rigorism at all in the first
five centuries, in certain places and in certain times.
The same mistake which has confounded times
and centuries, has also caused many writers to over-
look difference of place. Many seem to forget that

* Baronius, aim. 403. f Morinus, 6, 22, 24.

J The differences between churches founded by apostles, espe-
cially the Church of Rome and other churches, has been noticed
by Orsi, de Capitalium criminum absolutione. See also Morinus,
lib. 9, 20. Some have concluded from Tertullian that at one time
sinners of some kinds were nowhere allowed absolution at all,
even on their deathbeds. Both these eminent writers have com-
pletely refuted this opinion.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 267

canons of a Council of Agde or Elliberis prove
nothing but the practice of the Church in some
obscure provincial town. Laws of diocesan synods
are often cited with as much pomp as those of
Ecumenical Councils ; and the writers seem even to
forget that they are no more binding on a modern
cleric than we in Westminster are affected by an
order emanating from a bishop in France or Italy.
Considering the general tendency to neglect this prin-
ciple, it is unfortunate for us that so many of the
best writers of the early Church are African.
Tertullian and Minucius Felix, Arnobius and Lac-
tantius, not to speak of St Cyprian and St
Augustine, in whom the saint tempered the African,
all had Punic blood in their veins. Nowhere in the
Roman world did Christianity make such rapid and
complete progress as in Africa. At the time of the
Vandal invasion there were five hundred episcopal
towns, scattered over the six fair provinces which
occupied the shores of the Mediterranean, from
the Pillars of Hercules to where the continent slopes
down towards Egypt. Carthage had churches when
Rome was in the catacombs; and the cry which
was raised by the mob, on the first breaking out
of persecution, " Let the Christians be deprived of
the churchyards," proves that the Church possessed
already a recognized property. It was at a late
period that Christian blood began to be shed in
Africa, and the absence of danger, though favour-
able to the spread of the faith, had a peculiar effect
on the spirit of the Christians. There was ever a
strange mixture of civilization and savageness in

268 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

the African cross of the Roman blood. Carthage
was so renowned for the education and the elo-
quence of her children that she was called the city
of lawyers ; yet such were the vices of those men of
subtle thought and fluent tongue, that one who
knew them well could only say that their passions
were fiery and deep as iEtna itself. It was out of
these volcanic elements that the Church was to
make Christians, and to the last it must be allowed
that the African Christian had something of the
savageness of his origin. There was sometimes wild
revelry even in feasts held over the tombs of mar-
tyrs. Who does not recognize the African in the
unscrupulous intellect and the ferocious rigorism
of Tertullian ? It is not wonderful that the discipline
of the African Church partakes of the truculency
of the African character. How graphically* St
Cyprian describes the furious indignation of the
faithful against the apostate and the unclean, and
the difficulty which, with all his influence and
eloquence, he found in persuading them to allow
the wretched sinners to be admitted to begin their
long penance at all. He speaks of some bishopsf
who held that those guilty of a certain class of sins
should be excluded even from the hope of absolu-
tion to their dying day. He implies, { in one place,
that sins were punished with public penance, which
in other churches would be absolved as speedily
and in the same way as in the modern Church.
Nay, he himself was so infected with African
maxims§ as to refuse absolution to the dying who

*Ep.54. | Ep, 51. JEp. ii. §Ep. 51.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 269

had put off confession to the time of their deathbed.
No clearer proof could be required of the rigour of
the African Church, and I might point to other
churches for isolated examples of the same spirit,
as for instance, to the canons of Neocaesarea and
Elliberis, and to some decrees of Gallican bishops.
But there was one Church which never wavered
in its consistent advocacy of gentleness towards
sinners. While the greatest intellects in Christendom
were at sea upon the question of the best way of
opposing sin, while Africa and the East were rival-
ling each other in their severity, the Divine instinct
of the See of St Peter saw what was to be done.
The Vicar of Christ had his eyes ever fixed on the
kindness of Jesus, and was kind to sinners. What
a strange identity there is between the conduct of
the See of Rome in all ages! But little is known
about those silent Popes of the early Church. They
make no speeches; they write no books; some say
they did not even preach; but they knew how to
make decrees to govern Christendom, and to die.
While others argued, they saw; while an eloquent
Cyprian holds wooden views about the sacraments,
and argues plausibly enough that none but a
Christian can baptize, an obscure Pope Stephen
knows better the mind of Christ, sees that the
sacrament, which is the indispensable gate of sal-
vation, must be made as wide as possible, and
proclaims that a heretic may validly baptize; he
condemns his great antagonist, then goes down into
the catacombs, and is tracked there by the soldiers
as he is going to say Mass, and is martyred. They

270 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

were kings of men, those early Popes, over the dates
and the very names of whom critics fight. All
honour be to them as they lie in some unknown
corner of those under-ground galleries, because
they not only fought the Caesars, but fearlessly
governed Christendom, and, above all, exorcised
from Christianity the spirit of rigorism. Out of the
depths of Phrygia there comes a frantic asceti-
cism, most un- Christian and worthy of the land
which produced of old the worship of Cybele. It
spreads all over the world; it seizes upon the greatest
intellect Christianity had yet had or would have
to boast of for many a long year ; the mighty, reck-
less spirit of Tertullian. Humanly speaking, the
doctrine that the Church had no power to absolve
certain sins must soon have become the general
belief of the Christian world. When, lo! there
appeared, to the scandal of Africa and the rage of
Tertullian, a decree peremptory as any that issued
from the Vatican in the time of Innocent III. It
declared that the Church had the power and the
will to absolve the most unclean sinners. The sneers
of the frantic Tertullian have had but one result;
they have revealed to us, by the most unexception-
able of witnesses, the fact that the successor of St
Peter assumed the title of Bishop of Bishops, and
the doctrine of the Church on the power of the
keys.

There lay, however, within the walls of Rome
itself, a more dangerous enemy than Tertullian.
Among the forty-six presbyters, who, under Pope
Callistus, ruled the fifty thousand Christians of the

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 271

huge city, was one conspicuous for his brilliant
talents, his great learning, and his world-wide in-
fluence with the Gentile Christians. He seems to
have considered that his peculiar vocation was the
conversion of the heathen. Hippolytus had gained
an influence which might rival that of the spiritual
ruler of the imperial city itself. All parts and all
nations of the world were represented there; and
when, in the eloquent peroration to a book which
circumstances have rendered famous, he addresses
himself to " Greeks and barbarians, Chaldeans and
Assyrians, Egyptians and Libyans, Indians and
Ethiopians, Celts, and all the inhabitants of Europe,
Asia and Libya," he might have found living speci-
mens of these various races in the vast stream of
human beings which continually flowed through
the streets of Rome. Hippolytus was a man whose
virtues and whose defects were the very opposite
to those of Tertullian. The rugged and mighty in-
tellect of the Carthaginian held the same relation
to the subtle and polished Greek as does a gigantic
block of native granite to a graceful marble statue.
While the rude African delighted chiefly in bringing
out the opposition between Christianity and pagan
philosophy, the genius of Hippolytus led him to
attempt to win over his Grecian countrymen by
metaphysical speculations on the Word of God
which Plato would not have disowned. He was
betrayed into language which has marked him out
as one of the precursors of Arianism.* To his

* It is a remarkable instance of Father Newman's profound
sagacity that, in his wonderfully learned notes to St Athanasius,
he has accurately described beforehand the opinions of Hippolytus

272 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

astonishment the eloquent and learned Christian
philosopher found himself condemned by the See
of St Peter. The metaphysical Logos of Hippolytus
was calmly confronted with the old creed of the
Church, " I acknowledge one God,* Jesus Christ,
and none beside Him, that was born and suffered."
An ineffectual attempt to shake the fidelity of the
Roman people to the Pope increased the discom-
fiture of the condemned philosopher, and he has
left his bitter disappointment on record in a few
disgraceful pages of his Refutation of Heresies,
which bear all the marks of a Greek libel. Yet they
are deeply interesting to us, as revealing through
the storm of abuse and obloquy the old majestic
features of the Holy See.

Yes, O Hippolytus, whoever you may be, were
you even Cardinal Bishop of Portus, which it
appears you were not, it is an old habit of the suc-
cessor of St Peter to identify his communion with
the Catholic Church, f and he will continue to do
so many a long year after you and Pope Callistus
are dead and gone. A runaway slave he may or may

as they may now undoubtedly be gathered from the then
undiscovered Refutation; vide Translation of St Athanasius,
p. 272. The authority of Hippolytus is now destroyed by the fact
that he held a doctrine which was Arianism in germ, and that he
was condemned by the Holy See. He became a saint only through
his martyrdom. There must be some truth underneath the story
of Prudentius that he was a Novatian heretic, and repented pre-
viously to his martyrdom. Historians had long been puzzled by
the statement of Prudentius, when a book unexpectedly appears
containing rigorist views similar to those afterwards held by the
Novatians. Surely the coincidence is too remarkable to be for-
tuitous.

* " Refutation of Heresies," 285.

f " Refutation of Heresies," 291 .

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 273

not have been, but he is now Sovereign Pontiff,
and as such he has two gifts, which the Platonic
mind has not, a power of judging between true
doctrine and false, and a boundless love of vulgar
sinners, redeemed by the blood of Christ. Alas!
that you, O Hippolytus, should have connected
your honoured name with heresy, and have forced
us to class you with a frantic Tertullian. Happier
in this that you expiated all this sin by a glorious
martyrdom. We know that before the wild horses
tore you limb from limb, you repented of your
schism and your harshness to souls; but it took all
the blood which you shed then to wipe off that fatal
stain !*

Meanwhile we thank Hippolytus for this new
insight into the character of Rome. Every fresh
manuscript which is discovered only brings out the
identity of the principles of the Holy See. Whether
the Pope has been a banker's slave in the Piscina
Publica in the third century, or is an Italian noble-
man in the nineteenth, you find him assuming that
he is the head of the Catholic Church, pronouncing
doctrinal decisions, condemning intellectualism,
claiming a separate jurisdiction from the civil
power over marriages, and, what is most to our
purpose, maintaining gentleness of discipline to-
wards sinners. It is most instructive to find an
African Tertullian and a Greek Hippolytus echoing
the same invectives against the Holy See. There
must be some truth in the libel, and it is this. The

* I do not forget Dr Dollinger's admirable book on the subject,
to which I am much indebted. Nevertheless, in the exceeding un-
certainty of the matter, I prefer following the legend.

T

274 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM.

successor of St Peter has ever been the champion
of clemency towards sinners and the opponent of
rigorism. While in numberless places there were
rising up on every side rigorous opinions, forma-
lizing themselves at this time in a wild Montan-
ism, and a little later in a decorous Novatianism,
the Holy See set itself like a rock to stem the torrent.
We have to thank Hippolytus for a fresh link in the
chain of this tradition of mercy, when he tells us
that Callistus averred that he " remitted sins to all
men," a practice apparently contradictory to his
own. The same Pope also uttered propositions
offensive to the philosophical mind;* " Yea, and he
said that the parable of the cockle was spoken of
by our Lord for this purpose; leave the cockle to
grow with the wheat, that is, sinners in the Church.
Yea, and he said that the ark of Noe was like the
Church, for that there were dogs and wolves and
crows in it, and clean and unclean beasts. After
this fashion, according to him, things ought to be
in the Church." There can be no clearer proof
that the powerful and eloquent Hippolytus was
a rigorist, and was condemned as such by the
Holy See.

Such are the voices which come to us out of the
darkness of the first centuries, at the time when the
Holy See could not only assert but exercise unre-
strained its rightful authority. One great evil of the
times of persecution is, that it renders difficult the
communication between separate churches and
between the Church and her Head; and even in

* " Refutation," 290.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 275

the fourth century, after Christianity became the
established religion of the empire, the long struggle
with Arianism, during which so many bishops were
in exile, and their thrones occupied by usurpers,
could not but throw into confusion the relations
between the several parts of Christendom. This
was precisely the time, as we have seen, when the
discipline, especially of the Eastern Church, was
most severe. At the beginning of the fifth century
however, there sat upon the throne of St Peter a
succession of Pontiffs such as have never been sur-
passed in the annals of Christianity. In these
momentous sixty years, from the accession of
Innocent I to the death of St Leo, during which
Rome was threatened by Rhadagaisus and Attila,
and sacked by Alaric and Genseric, it is wonderful
to see the Popes resuming their old functions of
mitigating the perpetual tendency to rigorism which
existed in various churches. While Goth, Vandal,
and Hun were thundering at the gates of Rome,
Innocent, Celestine, and Leo are issuing decrees to
all parts of Christendom to enforce upon bishops
kindness to sinners. Three heresies, Pelagianism,
Nestorianism, and Eutychianism rose, and had to
be put down, tumultuous councils to be managed,
and emperors to be directed, yet the Popes still
found time to lay down laws for the administration
of the sacraments, which are the foundation of the
present discipline of the Church. Whenever rigorism
arose it was met by a decree of the Sovereign
Pontiff. Innocent, in a letter* to Exuperius of

* Vide Appendix H.

T2

276 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

Toulouse, orders the Holy Communion to be given
to inveterate sinners who had put off the Sacrament
of Penance to their deathbed. Celestine is told that
Gallican bishops refused absolution to deathbed
penitents. " We are filled with horror," he says,
11 that any one should be found so impious as to
despair of the mercy of God. What is this but to
add death to the dying, and to kill his soul by your
cruelty in preventing his absolution? as though
God was not ever most ready to help the sinner. "
Some Italian bishops compelled sinners to proclaim
their sin aloud in a public penance. St Leo peremp-
torily forbids it as being " an act of presumption,
contrary to Apostolic practice," and lays down as
a general principle that secret confession to a priest
is sufficient of itself. Absolution is to be given to
the dying, even if they are insensible when the
priest arrives, and have not been to confession for
a long time before. In ancient times public penitents
were in certain cases separated from their wives,
compelled to give up business, and to leave the
army.* St Leo virtually abrogates this ancient
legislation, by declaring all this to be a matter not
of precept but of counsel. Certainly, if rigorism can
be charged upon any churches, in the first five cen-
turies, it is not the fault of the Church of Rome.

Nothing can be clearer than the fact that the
early Church adapted her discipline to the various
wants of time and place: did she equally vary her
rules at any given time to the capacity of individual
souls ? I have never denied that the Church of the

*Ep. ad Rusticum, Morinus, lib. 5, 24.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 277

first five centuries was far more severe than the
Church of this day; but, was she rigorous ? What is
the meaning of the startling canons of the councils
and penitential books of the day? Where, for in-
stance, a sinner presented himself at the feet of a
priest, and confessed a sin for which was assigned a
penance of even three or thirty years, was he in
every case compelled to undergo the whole penance,
to wait to the end of that time for absolution and
the Holy Communion, without distinction of the
length of the time that the habit had been upon
him, of the number of times that it had been com-
mitted, or of age and sex ? Was the same penance
inflicted upon the man who had fallen once as on
the old sinner whose habit had lasted for years ?
Was no account taken of the amount of tempta-
tions and of resistance, of the disposition of the
individual soul, its contrition, its capacities for
penance, or its weakness ? The notion is incredible.
Such a system of legislation, such a wooden tariff
of sins could never be put into practice. | .

Let us endeavour to put aside imagination, and
to gain an accurate view of what can be known
about the penitential system of the early Church.
First, let us remember that by far the greater part
of mortal sins were absolved precisely in the same
way as now without public penance.* During the

* See Morinus, lib. v, 2; lib. ix. 14. For discipline of Rome, vide
Francolinus, Vet. Eccl. vind. lib. i, disp. 8. The three sins were
idolatry, homicide, and mcechia. It may be doubted what is the
precise extent of the sins indicated by the last word. That it did
not mean all sins of that nature is certain. Before St Basil's time
even a lapsed religious was only punished with a year's penance.
Ad Amphil, can. 18.

278 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

first three centuries to three sorts of sins alone was
absolution refused till such a penance had been
performed. After these in some churches some other
grave sins were added to the list ; in the Church of
Rome the number was never increased. Thus, even
in the severest times, at Rome at least, all sins
whatsoever of thought, and all sins of action, except
three, were pardoned without exclusion from the
Holy Communion. In all these cases, therefore,
there was no opportunity for rigorism.

Secondly, were secret sinners, even of these three
kinds, ever punished with public penance,* and
therefore excluded for a long time from Holy Com-
munion ? This is one of the most difficult questions
of Christian antiquity, and I do not pretend to
resolve it; but one thing seems to me proved, that
is, that such sinners were by no means always com-
pelled to do public penance. In other words, the
penitential laws of the Church were not universal
or inexorable, but depended in practice upon the
judgement formed by the priest on the dispositions
of the penitent. Let us attempt to obtain a view of
this part of the discipline of the Church of the first
five centuries. First, then, in the earliest times of
the Church, the question whether secret sinners of
this description were to be compelled to do public
penance by the refusal of absolution would hardly
occur at all. If there be one thing more than another
which strikes us in these infant Christian com-
munities, it is their touchingly childlike simplicity.
I gaze with wonder and awe at their supernatural

* Vide Appendix J,

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM. 279

gifts, at the superabundant overflow of mystical life
poured out on the renewed earth by the Holy
Spirit, the handmaids prophesying and the young
men seeing visions. But what strikes me most in
all that remains of them is the strong spirit of
charity which reigns among them. Each one of these
Christian communities in Jerusalem and Antioch,
Corinth and Rome, was like one family of brothers
and sisters in the Blood of Jesus. In the midst of
the rottenness of the pagan world, beneath the
shade of the Acropolis of the old Greek cities, close
by the temple of Aphrodite Melanis at Corinth, or
the groves of Daphne, or the Seraphim of Alexan-
dria, amidst all the accumulated devilry of thou-
sands of years, there arose little communities, which
spread around them a perfume of antique purity
and patriarchal simplicity. Each church looked like
an expansion of the family as the Church of Corinth
sprung out of the house of Stephanas. What a
picture, for instance, is there in the simple words
of St Ignatius to his brother bishop: " Let not the
widows be neglected; for Our Lord's sake be thou
their guardian, and let nothing be done without
thy will, neither do thou anything without the will
of God. Let there be frequent meetings. Seek out
every man by name. Despise not slaves, be they
men or women. Tell my sisters, that they live in
the Lord, and that they be content with their hus-
band's love; in like manner tell my brethren in the
name of Jesus Christ to love their wives, as the
Lord the Church. If any one is liable to remain in
purity in honour of the Body of Jesus, let him not

280 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

grow proud; if he boast, he is lost. If it lead him to
seek renown apart from the bishop, he is dead
already. It is right when youths and maidens marry
that their unions should be contracted with the
bishop's consent, that the marriage may be in the
Lord. Let all things be done for the honour of God.
Look to the bishop that God may also look upon
you." The bishop here evidently takes the place of
the loving father of one great family. All religious
acts seem to have been done in common as much as
possible. There was but one Mass, that of the
bishop, at which all the priests communicated with
him, as is done even now at an ordination. The
bishop was ordinarily the only confessor and direc-
tor.* In such a state of things there would, pro-
bably, be no compulsion required to induce a sinner
to make a public penance, which at that time would
probably last but a few weeks. Brothers and sisters
do not mind being reproved before each other; the
whole spiritual family wept over and with the
offender; and rejoiced at his absolution, when his
brief penance was over. The question of the separa-
tion of the two fora would probably hardly suggest
itself to the faithful, since a case would at once,
with the easy consent of the interested person, pass
from one to the other.f It would hardly occur to

* For instance, vide canon of Carthage (Morinus, p. 297),
" Presbyter inconsulto episcopo non reconciliabit Pasnitentem nisi
absentia Episcopi et necessitate cogente." It is worth while to
notice how early the doctrine of j urisdiction occurs in the Church.

f In this sense alone can I accept the statement of Morinus,
that originally the two fora were identical in the Church, a state-
ment, however, which he himself qualifies in the same chapter so
much as to neutralize it, lib. 1, cap. 10.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 281

them to ask whether absolution was to be denied
if the sinner refused to do penance in public, since
like docile children they would readily allow their
spiritual father to impose upon them what penance
he pleased, especially when we remember that,
though the imposition of such a penance was a
ceremony which took place in the church, the par-
ticular sin was always concealed.*

The difficulty, however, would be sure to arise
when the spread of Christianity brought along
with it more frequent sin, greater severity, and less
child-like obedience. Then, indeed, it was impos-
sible that sinners should always willingly accept
public penance, and the question arose, whether
they should be compelled to do such penance, with-
out their own consent, for secret sins. It arose, it is
true, far later than we should suppose, because the
family feeling among Christians lasted far longer
than we should be inclined to suppose. f We may,
however, allow that there are many canons, es-
pecially of the fourth century, which, at least, are
susceptible of being interpreted in the sense that
secret sins of some kinds were, in some churches at
least, publicly punished, and that without the con-
sent of the sinner. The point on which I insist is,
that in the sternest times, the rule that secret
sinners might be compelled by the refusal of abso-
lution to do public penance, assuming that it existed
at all, was restricted by so many exceptions as to
render it anything but universal. No public penance

* Vide Sozomen, quoted by Morinus, lib. ii, c. 9.

f Vide a remarkable passage ofjTertullian, De Paen. 10, 11.

282 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

could be imposed on a married person without the
consent of his or her consort; and, what is still
more remarkable, such a penance was hardly, if
ever, inflicted upon the young of either sex.* Most
remarkable also is the reason assigned for exempt-
ing youth from public penance, that is, on account
of the frailty incident to their age. Rigorism would
have drawn the very opposite conclusions. There
is even a curious tradition, that no one was allowed
to do public penance before the age of forty. f
When these two large classes, the young, and, in
many cases, the married, are exempted from the
canons which enjoin public penance, an immense
drawback must be made from the picture which
imagination has drawn of the vast number of public
penitents in the Church, even in the severest times
and places. Furthermore, it is an acknowledged %
fact that, from the fourth to the eighth century,
public penitents quitted the exercise of their trades
or professions. The imperial minister was no more
seen at the palace, the merchant disappeared from
the exchange, the soldier quitted the army. It is
perfectly incredible that all secret sinners should
have been submitted, against their will, to such a
discipline as that. Soldiers, for instance, are not the

* Not only is this fact stated by Francolinus, Paen. I, 3, but it is
also narrated by Morinus, lib. v, 19, 24. He speaks of canons
" quibus edicitur Paenitentiam conjugatis ex mutuo tantum
consensu esse imponendam, juvenibus vero aut difficile aut nullo-
modo imponendam."

f Labb., torn. 11, 630.

J Morinus, lib. 5, c. 21. He allows in that chapter that saspissime
Patres coacti sunt disciplinam relaxare. Evidently St Leo relaxed
the canons for the purpose of saving the existence of public
penance, c. 24,

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 283

most moral of mankind. Can we believe that all
who led bad lives were compelled to do public
penance, and to quit the ranks? Evidently either
the canons apply only to notorious sinners, or they
were infinitely modified in practice.

Still more remarkable is the fact, that it was a
universal principle that no cleric was punished by
public penance.* Even those who had been guilty
of very grievous sins were allowed to communicate
immediately after absolution. From this fact I
draw two conclusions, which seem to me evident:
first, that the canons acknowledged the wide prin-
ciple, that sins materially the same were variously
punished according to the various conditions of the
sinner; and secondly, that the reception of the
Blessed Sacrament by sinners, very soon after the
sin, was not foreign to the views of the early Church.
Thus, not even the strictest canons are indis-
criminate; they do not involve in one universal
sentence all sinners, without distinction of indi-
vidual conditions. Even in Carthage, the most
rigorous of all churches, a distinction is recognized
between secret and public sins.f Altogether, it
seems to me impossible to reconcile the various
authorities on the subject without supposing that,
in the actual administration of the severest laws, it
was left to the bishop or the priest to determine

* Ai&kovos fiera ttjv diaxovLav iropveixras 0.71-0/3X77x6? fxeu rijs Siaicovias
£srcu els 5e rbu tQiv Xcllk&v tottov airooadeis kt)s Koivuvlas ovk eipxO'HO'eTai,
St Basil, Ep. 1 88. That Kotvuvia means the Holy Eucharist is
plain from a comparison with the very remarkable canon, 79,
among the reputed Nicene canons. Labb., torn. 11, 979; Morinus,
lib. 9, 14-

f Canon 32, Labbe, torn. 11, 885,]

284 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

whether, in the particular instance, it would not be
best for the soul of the sinner to temper and to
moderate them.

It is evident, then, that " Sacramenta propter
homines " was not forgotten by the Church in her
discipline with respect to the publicity of penance.
But it extended also to every branch of her peni-
tential system. It seems as though, after the Church,
in her severest mood, had made the strictest decrees,
she at once grew compassionate, when it became
necessary to apply them to the individual sinners.
Cite me any portion of her discipline, and I will
undertake to show you how she modified it when
it came to actual practice. Nothing astonishes us
so much in the ancient Church as the passages of
the Fathers which seem to assert that the Sacra-
ment of Penance was allowed only once to sinners.
I fully believe that this means public penance as
contrasted with secret, which was reiterated no
matter how often. But, be this as it may, there are
instances on record of the frequent reception of
relapsed sinners, of a class to which you would
have supposed that the Church would have been
peculiarly severe. Over and over again did Cerdon,
the heretic, deceive the Church by a false repentance,
yet the excommunicated man was received with
open arms whenever he returned. When we re-
member how often heresy involved sins of another
kind,* this fact goes far to neutralize the startling
passages to which we allude. Marcion had been

* As in the case of the women mentioned by St Irenaeus. Lib. i,
e.g.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 285

excommunicated for a sin of a heinous nature; he
was re-admitted to the bosom of the Church, and
then fell into heresy, yet he was again received,
notwithstanding his relapse. Either, then, no such
rule existed in the early Church,* or else she was,
according to St Alphonso's maxim, a lion in public,
a lamb in the confessional.

Take, again, what startles us as much as any-
thing— the length of time during which, according
to the penitential canons, heinous sinners were kept
without absolution, and consequently without com-
munion. Innumerable are the instances in which
we see the verification of the assertion of Morinus,
that in cases in which, according to the ordinary
law of the Church, absolution would have been
deferred, " sometimes it, as well as communion,
were given at once, even to most wicked men." It
was an understood principle in early times that
martyrs and confessors could grant indulgences to
public penitents, that is, by the application of their
own sufferings could procure absolution to sinners
who had not fulfilled their term of penance. Even
the sneers of Tertullian cannot spoil the beautiful
picture on which our imagination loves to dwell of
sinners crowding to the prisons for mitigation of
their penance, while the martyrs rejoiced in their

* The chief authority for the opinion is the Pastor of Hermas. It
seems to me that that book does not represent the discipline of
the Church, but that which the author desires to introduce, and
which could not be introduced without the authority of private
revelations. We might as well insert St Gertrude's visions in the
Corpus Juris as adduce the Pastor as a proof of the legislation of
the Church. There is a curious instance of penance being allowed
more than once in the seventy-ninth canon of Nicaea, quoted
above.

286 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

sufferings, not only because they shed their blood
for Jesus, but because they could restore the Holy
Communion to the longing souls of their erring
brethren.* How touching is the letter written by
Celerius, a Roman Christian, to Lucian, a Cartha-
ginian sufferer, waiting for death in prison. The
Roman entreats him to restore to the altar Numeria
and Candida, two Christians, for whose weak
woman's nature the persecution had been too
strong. Even without the martyr's prayers, the
Church often remitted the penalty to sinners, and
restored them to the Blessed Sacrament long before
their time. Who does not remember the clemency of
Pope Cornelius to the fallen ? It had all been settled
in solemn council; during the vacancy of the Holy
See the Roman clergy had written to St Cyprian to
recommend severity, so many and so scandalous
had been the apostacies during the terrible per-
secutions. Carthage had seen assembled all the
bishops of Africa, in no way loth to exercise their
virtuous indignation on the fallen sinners. Fully
did the apostates deserve the severe sentence passed
upon them, and the Carthaginian clergy had the
satisfaction of knowing that the Roman clergy had
resolved on the same stringent measures. Hardly,
however, was St Cornelius seated on the throne f
of St Peter, when Africa was scandalized by the
news that, in his compassion, he had given absolu-
tion and Holy Communion to all the apostates. St
Cyprian attempts to soothe his angry colleagues
by saying that the fact was untrue. Yet he cannot

* Orsi, sec. 3, cap. 35. f Ep. 51.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 287

deny that a great part of the fallen had already
been allowed to communicate. Cornelius had
granted absolution to Trophimus, a notorious
apostate priest, and to a large number with him.
Rome was ever steadfast to her traditions of mercy.
Even in Africa the canons could not be carried out,
St Cyprian writes to reprove Victor, a priest, for
having granted absolution to a sinner after a very
brief penance; and St Cyprian himself received
back the penitent apostates in a short time on the
approach of persecution.

But we have more direct proof of the fact that
the laws of the Church, with respect to the length
of penance, were modified according to the disposi-
tions of the individual. Whether you consult the
Hagiology or the Councils, or the Fathers of the
Church of the first five centuries, you find proofs
of the shortening of the duration of penance, in
spite of the penitential canons. The intimate life of
the Church is often better known from the lives of
the saints than from more stately histories. Who
that has read the lives of the Desert Saints does not
remember St Mary of Egypt ? She had broken the
laws of God, and all possible canons of the Church.
After scandalizing Alexandria, she transferred to
the Holy City, at the holiest time, the abomination
of her presence. The Blessed Virgin converts her,
by a stroke of grace, in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre. Heart-broken, she walks all night, and
reaches the valley of the Jordan in the morning.
There and then, in the church on the banks of the
stream, she receives at once the Holy Communion.

288 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

In one night of penance the sinful creature had
expiated years of sin. According to the canons,
many a long year must have passed before her abso-
lution. Take, again, the stories told in the lives of
the Saints of the Desert, of sinners going to the
Holy Communion. Some had been guilty of one of
these three sins, for which, universally, according
to law, a long public penance was to be done. Yet
when, after* a brief time of secret repentance, they
received the Blessed Sacrament, their bodies were
seen luminous and resplendent as an angel. Most
significant are these facts. The lives of the Desert
Saints are the popular devotional reading of the
fourth and fifth centuries; and such stories prove
that there was nothing startling to the minds of
Christians in the fact of a sinner going at once, on
his conversion, to the Holy Communion.

If we turn back to the legislation of the Church,
surely all the touching exhortations in the apos-
tolical constitutions, by which a bishop is conjured
to be merciful to sinners, imply that the length of
their penance was in his hands. Even St Basil
writes to Amphilochius, that, "he to whom God
in His mercy has given the power of binding and
loosing, will not be condemned if he mercifully
diminishes the time of the penances imposed, when
the penitent is fervent." And long before St Basil,
an authority even greater than he, in her first
CEcumenical Council, the Church, just recovering
from persecution, takes advantage of the first
settled peace to decree mercy to sinners. She orders

* Rosweide, pp. 524, 648.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 289

absolution always to be given to the dying.* She
expressly leaves to the bishop the modification of
penitential laws, especially with respect to the
length of penance, as also do the Councils of Ancyra
and Laodicea.f

When, however, we turn from the decrees of
Councils to the writings of the Fathers, the case
seems plainer still. Legislation is necessarily dry,
colourless, and abrupt: the question is, how was
the law put into practice ? We have seen how much
was left to the discretion of the minister of the
sacrament, how he might modify and temper the
law not only as to the publicity, but as to the dura-
tion of this penance. It is, therefore, most important
to make out what was the spirit of the Fathers in
the administration of the Sacrament of Penance.
Did they act as though they thought that the time
of penance depended not on the law but on the
dispositions of the penitent ? Did they modify the
law according to the merits of the individual ? Did
they even acknowledge the principle that the bur-
den imposed upon the sinner is to be suited to his
strength, and that his frailty is to be taken into
consideration ? Here again imagination has played
tricks with us. We gaze with awe upon those great
saints through the lapse of ages ; we remember how
they withstood barbarian kings and civilized em-
perors, and we think that they must have been
stern. We are caught by the grave and solemn
music of their Greek and Latin, and we see them

* Canon 12. Labbe, torn. 11, 674.

f Canon 5, torn. 11, 515. Canon 2, torn. 11, 563.

U

290 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

presiding over councils, throned and mitred, with
stole and pallium. They appear before us lofty,
resplendent, even terrible in their virginal majesty,
like the mountains in their eternal snow, high above
us, immovable and cold, flashing back from their
foreheads the pure light of heaven. We forget their
love of souls.* Here they become at once human
and saint-like. This is the key to the heart of the
early Church, and the token of its union with the
Heart of Jesus. We praise the undaunted courage
of St Ambrose in imposing penance on the guilty
emperor; we forgot his compassion in admitting
him to the Holy Communion, after a short penance
of eight months, though, according to the canons,
he should have been excommunicated for at least
twenty years. How touching is it to hear a great
St Chrysostom avow that he fled from the Episco-
pate, for fear of not being able to deal with sinners
as kindly as he should? His whole book on the
priesthood is the cry of terror of a loving heart,
trembling lest it should not love sufficiently to
please Jesus. Yet we know that his enemies accused
him of laxity towards sinners. How well he under-
stood the effeminate beings with whom he had to
deal, and how fully he was prepared to condescend
to their weakness!*)* He is talking of the difficulty
of bringing sinners to repentance. " The law gives
us no power," he says, in significant words, " to
compel them to do penance, and if it did, we could
not use it. What, then, is a man to do ? If you are

* A beautiful instance of this love of souls is to be found at the
end of St Gregory Nazianzen's thirty-ninth oration.

f De Sacerdotio, ii, c. 3, 4,

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 291

too gentle with one who wants a severe amputation
you leave half the wound unhealed; but if you
unsparingly use the knife, the pain drives him to
despair, he tears away the bandages, flings himself
headlong into all evil, casts away all restraint, and
breaks in pieces the salutary yoke." Nevertheless,
the saint boldly accepts the alternative of mildness.
" I could tell you of many," he says, " who have
utterly perished in desperate sins, because a pen-
ance was put upon them in proportion to their
misdeeds. Punishment ought not to be exacted pre-
cisely also according to the measure of a man's
sins; you must judge of the dispositions of the
sinner, lest in trying to patch up a rent you make
the tear worse, and in hastening to raise the fallen,
you cast him down more violently. Where you have
to do with frail and effeminate persons, brought up
in all the delicacies of the world, yea, and proud of
their birth and power, you may convert them from
their sins by little and little, if not perfectly, yet so
as to free them partly from the evils under which
they suffer, whilst, if you attempt to correct them
violently, you deprive them of that little ameliora-
tion." Could he declare in plainer words how much
he hated rigorism, and how distinctly he realized
the principle, that the weakness of the sinner should
be taken into account in the imposition of the
penance? In one of his homilies, when exhorting
his hearers to frequent ^communion, he says, that
" a preparation of five^days is enough even for a
man burdened with a very heavy load of sin." It is
a favourite maxim of his, that " duration of time is

u2

292 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

not necessary for penance." "Think not," he says,
" of the shortness of the time, but of the goodness
of God." Take also an ancient writer often quoted
under the name of St Jerome. " When the canons
fix the measure of time for doing penance, they do
not mean clearly to lay down how each sin is to be
corrected, but they leave it to the discretion of the
priest, for God does not look so much to the length
of time as to the depth of grief, nor to the abstin-
ence from food so much as to the mortification of
sin."

But the most certain sound comes from the chair
of St Peter. Innocent declares that the priest has
power of dismissing the penitent as soon as he
judges that his satisfaction is sufficient.* But there
is one voice above all, clear and unmistakable; it
is that before which the hordes of Huns rolled back
from the North of Italy. " The time of penance,"
writes St Leo f to a bishop, "is to be settled by
your judgement, according as you see the devotion
with which sinners turn to God." "Penance," he
says, " is not to be judged of by time, but by the
compunction of the heart." Nay, he is careful not
to make the sacrament odious ; he legislates for the
weakness of sinners, and gives it as a reason for
severely forbidding all public enumeration of secret
sins. For this reason he lays down as a fundamental
axiom, that for secret sins confession to God and
to a priest is sufficient. J Practically speaking, then,
we can gain a sufficiently clear insight into the

* Ep. i, Labbe, torn, in, 1029.

f Ep. 129, ad Nicetam. J Ep, 136.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 293

discipline of the early Church. In spite of the specu-
lative difficulties which surround us in the inter-
pretation of the canons, we can tell what would be
the reception which a young man who had com-
mitted great sins would meet with from his con-
fessor, in the fourth or fifth centuries. He would
not be forced to do public penance. The length of
his private penance would depend a great deal on
the character of the priest to whom he applied. If
he made his confession to St Basil, a considerable
time would probably elapse before he received the
Holy Communion. If a young Milanese threw him-
self at the feet of St Ambrose,* the saint would
have shed floods of tears, as though he himself were
the sinner, and would have so moved him to com-
punction that he would soon have been fit to be
absolved. If he had gone to St Chrysostom, he
would have said, " My child, do penance for your
sins; come to me in a few days and you shall be
absolved, and receive your Lord."-)* But whether
he was in Cesarea or Constantinople, his confessor
would not judge him by rigid rules, but would
absolve him sooner or later, according to the
measure of his contrition.

Such was the Church's period of severity, and
such was its result. It lasted from about the middle
of the third century to the end of the fourth, or
the first half of the fifth. Even while it lasted it
never degenerated into rigorism; it was infinitely
modified by the love of souls. In the East it finished

* Vide Life by Pauliims.

f Vide Orat. 6, ad S. Philogonium,

294 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

with Nectarius; in the West, where it had never
been so severe, its existence was prolonged, but it
was penetrated and neutralized by the merciful
maxims of the Popes, and public penance assumed
more and more the appearance and the rarity of a
religious profession.*

It was tried once more under very different
auspices. What had been given up as impracticable,
when the Church had to deal with the courtiers of
Eudoxia, was attempted by a sect on those of
Louis XIV.

It cannot be denied that if an uncompromising
severity is the best method of winning sinners to
God, the French of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries were fit subjects for its exercise. All over
Europe, wherever it had penetrated, the Reforma-
tion had left behind it a terrible dissoluteness of
manners. A series of unprincipled reigns from
Francis I to Henry III had greatly injured the
national character, and Henry IV brought a sol-
dier's licence as well as a soldier's virtues to the
throne. The religion and the piety of Louis XIII
were not sufficiently amiable or vigorous to remedy
the evil. The memoirs of the time reveal the growing
corruption of the aristocracy of France. The popu-

* It is very curious to see how this was the case even from the
time of Pope Siricus. For instance, a runaway penitent is pun-
ished like an apostate monk; and, what is still more strange, no
married person can enter the class of penitents unless the inno-
cent consort enters it with him, precisely as is the case with mar-
ried persons taking religious vows. That provisions such as these
should be applied to the generality of the faithful is perfectly in-
credible, especially if we reflect that the age of primitive fervour
was long past, and that vice was, unfortunately, by no means
rare.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 295

larity of many of the heroines of that memorable
time was evidently not injured by their want of
respectability. Vice was fast ceasing to be infamous.
But there were deeper depths to be reached on our
way to the regency and the Pare aux Cerfs. I turn
with horror even from the first brilliant years of
Louis XIV. For many a previous reign the vices of
the court had been gnawing into the heart of
France; but it was not then the all-absorbing
vortex which it afterwards became, when all
France lay at the feet of her absolute, young, and
brilliant king. We are accustomed to look upon the
court of Charles II as the very acme of all that is
bad; but it was rivalled, if not surpassed, by that
of his more glorious cousin. It does not diminish
our horror when we recollect that Louis was the
most Christian king. Paschal Communion only
renders the subsequent triumph of returning sin
more odious. I cannot thoroughly enjoy Bossuet's
splendid recitative when I remember who is in the
royal chapel in the train of the injured queen, and
how ineffectual is his eloquence. But we will not
dwell on the dishonour of the fleurs-de-lis.

How was the Church to grapple with this enor-
mous evil ? By renewing the canons of the ancient
Church, and by excommunicating Louis XIV ?
Alas ! we are not in the Middle Ages. The world,
since Philip the Fair, has been doing its best to
neutralize the authority of the Church; it is too
late for it to turn round upon her and reproach her
for not using it. Was the Holy See to lay France
under an interdict ? But interdicts can only be laid

296 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

on a thoroughly faithful people. They consist in
using the public opinion of Christendom against a
wicked, ruler — what if public opinion itself is cor-
rupt ? The Parisian world, which could bear in the
comedies of Moliere one long satire on the sanctity
of marriage, would hardly have been a fit subject
for the experiment. It is all very well to expect
some modern Ambrose to thrust the new Theo-
dosius out of Notre Dame. Gallicanism, however, is
not prolific of Ambroses, and would Theodosius
have obeyed ? You might look long for the saint of
Milan amongst the members of those amphibious
assemblies of the clergy, adorned by the character
and eloquence of Bossuet, really managed by the
clever and scandalous De Harlay. And after all, the
Church might pause and ask herself whether
severity was best for the sinner's soul ? It was tried
by the Archbishop of Sens, an ally of the Jansenists,
and by no means an Ambrose. When the king was
at Fontainebleau, he renewed the ancient censures
of the Church against sinners. The king quietly
retired to Versailles, beyond the bounds of the
prelate's diocese. On the other hand, his conversion
was at last effected by gentle means.

It needed no Jansenism to teach the Church how
to deal with the difficult problem. There lay a fund
of faith in the heart of the French nation, which
has carried it through many fiery trials, and pre-
served the Church in spite of the Revolution. All
that was good in the French nobility was Christian
and Catholic; Protestantism or Jansenism could
only spoil without deeply affecting them. They

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 297

were very different from the degenerate men and
the effeminate races with which the early Church
had to deal. There was something really great in
the Condes and Turennes, and in the noble soldiers
who afterwards fought at Steinkirk and Landen,
something even heroic in the way in which they
rallied round the sinking throne of Louis, and died
at Blenheim and at Ramillies. All this natural good-
ness might have been and often was turned on the
side of God. Very much has been done amongst
them, from that time until now, by seizing upon the
good points of their nature, and employing their
restless activity in the service of God. Such was
the secret found by St Vincent of Paul. The fine
ladies of that wicked luxurious Paris were induced
by him to sympathize with the frightful miseries
of the poor, and healed the wounds of their own
souls, while their hands tended the suffering bodies
of their fellow Christians. Duchesses d'Aiguillon
and Countesses of Joigny climbed up into the miser-
able garrets of the poor, and were kept close to God
amidst the vices of the court. Many a young French
nobleman shed his blood for Christendom, and per-
ished fighting in Candia against the Turks. Others,
like a Duke of Beaufort, " king of the rabble," in
times of the Fronde, put their brilliant courage to
better account in an expedition against Algiers,
and succeeded in liberating hundreds of Christian
slaves. Olier helped on St Vincent's work. He
formed confraternities of gentlemen and ladies who
assisted him in the reformation of his wide parish
of St Sulpice. He induced numbers to join in the

298 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

foundation of Villemarie, or Montreal, in Canada,
to form a bulwark for the rising Christianity of
North America against the Iroquois, and for the
conversion of the savages. Such was the plan of the
Church. It never repelled the amiable, clever, and
really noble Frenchman by an assumption of rigour.
It employed them in good works, and thus kept
them close to the sacraments. If you do not allow
them to wander far from God, some day even the
bad ones will return. There were often striking con-
versions in the worst of days. Henrietta of England,
she who inspired Bossuet with accents of genuine
grief which even yet move our hearts, died sweetly
kissing her crucifix. Anne of Gonzaga was wonder-
fully brought back to God in the midst of her reck-
less life. Who has not heard of the long penance of
Sister Louise de la Misericorde, once Duchess de la
Valliere? Many a soul, stricken, wounded, and
suffering, amidst the splendour of Versailles, was
brought back to God by the merciful theology of
the Church.

Upon all this great work came the reign of
Jansenism, chilling, dry, withering, like a perpetual
east wind. It was the same kind of movement as
the reaction of Puritanism in England against the
dissoluteness of the Cavaliers; and, like its English
counterpart, it fell in with a ready-made political
party to protect and to help it on. The ancient
simplicity of French manners, spoiled first by the
Renaissance, and then by the licence of the civil
wars, still lingered in many a provincial chateau,
amongst the smaller nobility, but above all, had

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 299

taken refuge among the legal families, the nearest
approach to a great middle class in France. It was
out of the unnatural union of this latter party with
discontented nobles that sprung the Fronde, and of
the debris and detritus of the Fronde came the
strength of the Jansenist party. Hence its motley
character, hence the monstrous union of Rigorism
and De Retz, and the strange juxtaposition of the
perfumes of Madame de Sable and the dirt of the
Mere Angelique.

Such was the disreputable origin of modern
rigorism; let us now examine its characteristics,
and contrast them with those of the early Church.
It was very early in the history of Jansenism that
its doctrines with respect to the sacraments made
their appearance. The propositions taken out of the
Augustinus by Cornet, for the purpose of denounc-
ing them to the Holy See, were originally seven, and
among the two, withdrawn in order to reduce the
examination within the smallest compass possible,
was one which asserted that public penance was
essential to the sacrament, and that secret con-
fession was invalid.* It is not hard to discover the
parentage of the opinion. The prodigal out-pouring
of the precious Blood in the sacraments, the instan-
taneous and infinitely reiterated pardon given in
absolution; above all, the universal love of Jesus
for sinners implied in His unconstrained union of
Himself with them in the Holy Communion, were
all utterly incompatible with a doctrine which laid

* Vide Dumas' " Histoire des Five Propositions," p. 6. Faillon,
" Vie de M. Olier," p. 184, torn. 11.

300 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

down as its fundamental principle that Christ did
not die for all men, but only for the elect. Again,
all doctrines which teach any kind of Calvinistic
election necessarily require some mark to distin-
guish the elect from the reprobate, and some
method of distinguishing the converted from those
still out of favour with God. The enthusiasm of
a Methodist conversion was suited neither to the
frigid genius of Jansenism, nor compatible with the
possibility of remaining within the bosom of the
Church. A long suspension from Communion under
a Jansenist director, became thus the shibboleth
of the sect, the mark of thorough conversion to God.
These doctrines might long have slumbered in
the Augustinus if they had not been transmuted
into French by Antoine Arnauld, then a young
doctor of the Sorbonne. In 1643, the year of the
death of Richelieu, by order of St Cyran, appeared
" La Frequente Communion." The book made the
fortune of Jansenism. Up to that time its character
for severe virtue had been confined to the nuns of
Port Royal and a few devotees, directed by St
Cyran. It now flew far and wide over France. It
drew from some distant provinces of France, where
the civilization of the capital had never penetrated,
some seigneurs and country gentlemen, who wished
to repent of lives spent in wild debauchery. A few
old soldiers, one or two bad priests happily con-
verted, some barristers of repute, and some physi-
cians in full practice, gave up the world, settled
down as hermits in the valley of Port Royal, and
edified the world by their earnestness and penance.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 301

These men were the penitential capital of Jansenism.
But what was the effect of the book upon the
world. ?

St Francis of Sales had lived and died so lately
and his influence was too living for Arnauld to dare
openly to avow the purpose which we have seen
expressed by Jansenius. The blundering honesty of
the Belgian could not be imitated in France. The
principles taught by St Philip in Rome had come
across the Alps, through Piedmont and Savoy, and
had electrified France. From that little mountain
district in the Chablais, and from the borders of the
dark lake of Annecy, there came a spirit of love
which to this day impregnates the devotion of the
French people. Frequent communion was a first
principle which Arnauld dared not openly attack.
He says that he does not want to prevent the good
from receiving their Lord often; his only aim is
to establish the principle, that a sinner should,
whenever he committed a mortal sin, be suspended
from communion for at least a few months, " in
order afterwards to communicate frequently." He
positively disclaims the desire either to curtail
communions, or to bring back the ancient disci-
pline of the early Church.

O Antoine Arnauld, man of inexorable logic, let
it suffice you to have had the honour of measuring
swords with Malebranche, but do not dabble in
theology! Your talents are essentially pugnacious
and forensic, and like many controversialists, you
care more for making out your point than for the
truth! If you do not want to re-establish the dis-

302 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

cipline of the ancient Church, how is it that, where -
ever they dare, Jansenists do make the attempt ?
Why, in the parish of St Mery, in Paris, are there
men and women standing outside the church on a
Sunday during the Mass because the priest has
excommunicated them ? Why, to the ridicule of all
France, has the Archbishop of Sens promulgated
the extinct laws of obsolete discipline ? Why is the
diocese of Aleth in an uproar because Bishop
Pavillion, with head and heart as hard as the rocks
of its volcanic mountains, has restored public
penance, and has tried the experiment on several
wild seigneurs, who, it must be confessed, richly
deserved it ? O Antoine ! are you inconsistent or are
you untruthful ? As for myself, I have too great a
respect for your talents, and I know your long
career too well, not to believe in your want of
veracity rather than logic*

But he is gone to his account. Let us analyse his
book, and we shall have a complete picture of
modern rigorism, and be able to judge how, in
every respect, it is diametrically opposed to the
principles of the early Church.

First, his system is inflexible. It could not be
otherwise. The two motive principles, the one of
which is the origin, the other the check upon the
flexibility of the confessional, were utterly absent
from his mind. The love of souls was physically
impossible in the heart of one who held that Jesus
did not die for all. The love of Rome would have
been a strange inconsistency in an extreme Gallican,

* Vide Appendix K: On Jansenist insincerity.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 303

who looked upon each bishop as a St Peter on his
own particular rock. We are not, therefore, sur-
prised, if, in terms of indignant eloquence, he lays it
down that the discipline of the Church is invariable
and inexorable.*

Secondly, he never consistently looks upon the
sacraments as remedies for human frailty. In con-
formity with this principle, he lays down rules
which are the destruction of frequent communion.
He first declares that no one is to receive the Blessed
Sacrament who has not the purest love of God,
without any admixture. All are to be driven from
the altar whose hearts are not entirely purified
from the very images of their former sins, who are
not perfectly united to God alone, and entirely
irreproachable. When we remember that, accord-
ing to Arnauld, this purest love of God is the neces-
sary disposition! for communion, we may well ask
who then is to communicate ? No wonder his con-
temporaries called the book, " l'lnfrequente Com-
munion.' '

With respect to sinners, he lays it down as a rule
that no sinner should receive the Holy Communion
till the habit of sin is destroyed. He considers it
essential to the Sacrament of Penance that the
penance should be accomplished before absolution
can be received. This is founded as well upon the
essential order of things in the Spirit of God as upon

* He says, indeed, in one place, that as a wise physician the
Church may give to her sick children the medicine which she
knows they will not refuse; but Petavius has shown his gross in-
consistency.

t " Freq. Com." i, 5,6,

304 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

the laws of God's justice. Nay, the principal object
of the Sacrament of Penance is not pardon to the
sinner, but the satisfaction of God's justice. Every
single mortal sin thus involves a separation from
communion which he himself recommends should
last several months.* Who does not see that with
such principles frequent communion becomes im-
possible ? If the purest love of God is a necessary
condition for a good communion; if each separate
mortal sin involves a long penance and a long
privation of the Blessed Sacrament, the altars of
the Church must inevitably remain solitary and
abandoned. For once Arnauld tells the truth when
he says that few indeed would be allowed to com-
municate, if all were rejected from the altar who
ought to be rejected according to the spirit of the
Church.|

It was necessary to dwell upon Arnauld's prin-
ciples, because they are in fact the principles of all
rigorism. I have drawn out the difference between
Jansenism and the early Church, because there is
no doubt that a certain prejudice is created in
favour of rigorism by what lies on the surface of that
part of the early Church history which is best
known. It is certain that Arnauld's book make a
great impression even upon those of his contem-
poraries who were not of his party. In vain did
Petavius demolish the learning of Arnauld. His old-
world French and cumbrous logic were no match for
his opponent's nervous style and indignant assump-

* " Freq. Com." Preface, p. 15,
f " Freq. Com." 1, 23.

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 305

tion of injured innocence. There remain for a long
time marks of the influence both of the Provincials
and of the Frequente Communion in some of the
best writers of the French Church. I hear echoes of
it in the thunderbolts hurled from the talons of the
eagle of Meaux. There is a want of unction and
tenderness, a sustained and dignified unbending
severity in the sermons of the period, which un-
pleasantly smacks of rigorism. The fact is, we are
all rigorists by nature. It is not necessary to be a
Jansenist predestinarian to have a touch of the
pharisee in us. Nay, the very opposite doctrine,
which pares down the consequences of the fall,
exaggerates the strength of the will, and forgets
the fickleness of fallen nature, is logically just as
rigorist as Jansenism.

And the world, which is neither logical nor Jan-
senist, salved its conscience by rigorist principles
and laxity of action.* Young ladies slyly read " La
Frequente," as it was called in Jansenist slang,
because it came under the category of naughty
books. Dissolute young men eagerly took up the
doctrine, that suspension from communion was the
best of penances, more meritorious than fasting or
almsgiving. f It is instructive to remember the
occasion on which Arnauld's book was written. The
Princess de Guemene refused to go to a ball on the
day of her communion, under the auspices of a
Jansenist director. J Another lady, thinking this
strange, applied to her own director, who wrote

* Cousin, " Vie de la Marquise de Sable," p. 59,

f " Freq. Com." 11, 23.

I This is Ste Beuve's account of the matter.

X

306 SEVERITY AND RIGORISM

her a letter to prove that the ball and the com-
munion were not incompatible. Out of the corre-
spondence which resulted, sprung Arnauld's book.
Not otherwise noteworthy to us this quarrel be-
tween two ladies of the court of Anne of Austria,
two centuries ago, if it did not reveal the fact that
the princess was allowed by her director to receive
the Holy Communion. O Madame de Guemen6, of
the two it would have been better for you to go to
the ball, and not to approach the altar ! You are of
those who strain at gnats and swallow camels.
From what De Retz tells us of you, if you had knelt
in St Alphonso's confessional, you would have
gone away unabsolved. Rigorism ever leads to
laxity from its want of principle.

Once more, rigorism never dies. If it were not for
the kindred Pharisaism of our nature, Jansenism
would long have been consigned to the huge Don-
daniel of oblivion. So much nonsense could not still
be written about it, if it did not flatter some part
of our original sin. I have known men, excellent
men too, in France, who did not go to communion
even at Easter on account of the principles of dread
which had been instilled into them in their youth.
As for us priests, Heaven defend us from rigorism.
Let us remember that the unerring logic of history
has led us to this conclusion. The true spirit which
should guide us in the distribution of the Holy
Communion is, first of all, an ardent love of souls,
and the continued recollection of the infinite com-
passion of Jesus for their frailty. The contradic-
tory to rigorism is flexibility in the application of

SEVERITY AND RIGORISM 307

laws to the wants of individual souls, the whole
checked and controlled by obedience to Rome.
Without it, the administration of the sacraments
of God's love would degenerate into a sort of
Presbyterian cutty-stool.

X2

CHAPTER III. THE COMMUNIONS OF THE
IMPERFECT

We have now finished, the historical part of our work.
We have wandered painfully through systems of
philosophy and wide tracts of history. Some of
us may remember many years ago, how our boyish
imagination was deeply impressed with the account
of Spaniards groping their way through the tangled
mazes of a West Indian forest, with a host of Caribs
pursuing them. Such seems to be the journey of
a man who has once got into the tangled thickets
of theory. It is little enough that he can see of
the light of the sun, for the tall giants of the forest,
in their attempt to reach heaven with their tops,
have shut it out. The very luxuriance of all this
earthly growth has taken captive the beautiful
light as in a net, so that it can hardly struggle down
through the wilderness of their broad leaves, and the
thick undergrowth of wild vines and flowery
creepers which clasp them round. It all looks very
beautiful, but a man, if he wants to make his way
to the free air beyond, must laboriously carve his
road foot by foot through the matted mass of
hopeless jungle. Nay, what light there is only shows
black pools, and quivering swamps, where a poor
soul may drown amid spotted snakes and loathsome
caymans. Earth quakes beneath our feet, and
heaven is hid. Fresh obstacles to truth pullulate
out of the activity of an intellect which creates its
own difficulties the farther we go. Better, perhaps,
never to have entangled ourselves at all in such a
labyrinth. Yet it was all for the glory of the Blessed

308

COMMUNIONS OF THE IMPERFECT 309

Sacrament. We in England can hardly be dispensed
from entering that forest to hunt for souls. There is
many a noble creature of God wandering amidst the
old swamps and rank labyrinths of human error;
and we must go thither to hunt for them. With the
risk of running my metaphor to death, I cannot help
remembering how beautiful was Corpus Christi in
Paraguay, with the tropical flowers breathing out
their odorous lives, and the green birds fluttering,
and lithe leopards playing around the procession;
and, better than all, Christian Indians singing sweet
hymns, and bowing the knee before Jesus in the
Sacrament of His love. Ah ! it is worth while to gc
down into the most dismal swamp, and to thread th
paths of the most tangled wood to save one soul.

However, we breathe more freely now that we
have done. All this work has not been worthless for
ourselves. We have even a clearer idea of the blessed
truth than we had before. We have laid down
principles which will help us now. Above all, I hope
that our long historical research hat; given us a vivid
view of the practice of the Church and a truthful
picture of rigorism. We have now done with both
theory and history. We are going to apply prac-
tically the principles which we have gained. I shall
not be so solicitous about order and method as
hitherto. I shall only treat in an unscientific way a
few prominent questions with respect to Holy
Communion.

There is one question which seems to me the turn-
ing-point of the whole doctrine of spiritual writers
about Holy Communion: Are habitual imperfec-

310 THE COMMUNIONS OF

tions an obstacle to frequent communion? Let us
examine this question together ; it will throw great
light upon the whole subject.*

In order that there may be no mistake, I premise
two things. Frequent communion is a relative term,
the meaning of which depends upon the custom of
the age. In the Middle Ages once a month, in the
time of St Francis of Sales once a week would be
considered frequent. In our time, according to the
general estimation, a Christian who communicated
once a week would not be considered a frequent
communicant. I am not, therefore, asking whether
a person who is ordinarily exempt from mortal sin,
but has still some affection for venial sin, may com-
municate every week. That I take for granted. I
assume, as certain, that all ordinarily good Chris-
tians may communicate once a week.f The ques-
tion which we are considering, then, may be stated
thus : Is a person who is really imperfect to be pre-
vented from communicating more than once a
week?

Secondly, I mean really imperfect. I am not
talking of scruples, that is, of acts which the doer

* It is important never to forget the condemnation of the fol-
lowing proposition by Alexander VIII. " Consuetudo moderna
quoad administrationem Sacramenti Poenitentiae, etiamsi earn
plurimorum hominum sustenet auctoritas et multi temporis
diuturnitas confirmet nihilominus ab Ecclesia non habetur pro
usu sed abusu."

f " Never have I regarded weekly Communion as frequent,"
says St Alphonso; " that person alone who communicates several
times a week is considered to be a frequent communicant." It is
very important to remember this maxim of the saint. It is evident
that many more good Christians might communicate weekly if
they were not withheld by traditionary rigorism.

THE IMPERFECT 311

looks upon as sins, but which are not really so. I
mean downright habitual venial sin. Nor do I
address myself to the scrupulous, that is, to persons
who dispense themselves from righting against their
most real sins, by occupying themselves with imagin-
ary ones. These persons are not to be argued with
at all, for they are incapable of reason. Miserable
caricatures of the spiritual life, abnormal products
of the religious world as monsters are of the natural,
they are to be treated like half-witted creatures,
kindly, of course, yet without any appeal to their
common sense which does not exist. I have nothing
to do with them just now, but with another class,
who are often treated as though they were
scrupulous, but who are not really so; those who
are painfully conscious of imperfections which are
by no means unreal, which are not to be despised,
but to be strenuously fought against.

Let us imagine, then, a person of this description
thus addressing his or her confessor. To make
matters clearer, we will suppose it to be one of a
class often considered to be ordinarily incapable of
frequent communion, a married lady, a wife and a
mother. This, therefore, is what she says : —

I know that I wish to love God ; I am as certain
of it as I can be of anything whatsoever. I feel a
great drawing towards Him ; I have a special devo-
tion to the Blessed Sacrament, and a desire for the
Holy Communion. I feel an attraction for prayer.
I can spend some time with pleasure before the
tabernacle. At the same time I cannot persuade
mvself that I am fit to communicate often. I have

312 THE COMMUNIONS OF

no saintly aspirations. I love my husband and
children intensely, and I am happy in their love. At
the same time, I am distinctly conscious of number-
less imperfections. I feel within myself continual
movements of pride and sensitiveness, irritability and
resentment. I am easily scandalized, and I form
harsh and hasty judgements. I am slothful and
effeminate, fastidious and hard to please. In a word,
there is nothing extraordinary about me; I am
better, it may be, than some, because I have no
temptation to great sins ; but it would be absurd to
say that I am getting the better of my imperfec-
tions, or that I do all that I possibly can to overcome
them. I struggle against them, and I wish with all
my heart to be better, but I still remain the same.
Do you mean to tell me that I am fit to go often to
communion ? In vain you call me inconsistent, on
the ground that on my own principles I am not
worthy to communicate even as often as I do. After
all, a person who receives the Holy Communion
twice a week ought to be better than one who com-
municates once a month. I know what the Blessed
Sacrament is ; I cannot approach Him without fear.
Would you have me not fear God ? Others may
make up their conscience to communicate often,
but I cannot.

Now, I will begin by allowing that there is much
truth in what is here said, and that such feelings
cannot be simply dismissed or despised ; and I will
try first to separate the truth from the error.

Do I not wish you to fear God ? Heaven forbid
that you should not. Who can help fearing Him ?

THE IMPERFECT 313

The only difficulty is to restrain this terror within
due bounds, and not to fall down crushed and over-
whelmed at the very thought of God. I, for one,
have no sympathy with optimism. Where are we to
find shelter from the eye of God ? Surely, least of all,
in a good conscience. There was a time when some of
us were full of hope, when all the treasures of the
Church lay at our feet, and we dreamed of being
saints, and of doing great things for God. But now,
when we look at the sad reality, when, after years of
feeble, impotent struggling, we find self as un-
subdued as ever, and the same catalogue of mean-
ness and unfaithfulness in God's service meets us at
the close of every day, there is much danger, lest a
simple, desolate recklessness should take the place of
our aspirations after perfection. No wonder if the
more real a soul is, the more it rises above what I
cannot help calling the unreality of some devout
persons, the more also it shrinks from such a fre-
quency of communion as would be likely to
degenerate into a portion of the mere mechanism of
spirituality.

You see I have granted you a great deal, perhaps
more than you asked. Yet you are wrong if the
practical conclusion which you draw from all this is
that your communions should be few and far
between. In the first place, there is much which is
wrong in this fretful petulance. All this savageness
with self is a violent outburst of disappointed
nature. Nay, I strongly suspect there is a good deal
of rash judgement of your neighbours. I allow that
some devout persons may be tiresome and narrow

314 THE COMMUNIONS OF

minded, that there is much that is unreal in their
worship of their directors, yet, for all that, I cannot
help thinking ^that, with all their folly, they are
more pleasing to God than you with your fitful
pride.

But, above all, in this, as in everything else, should
not our only question be, what is God's will ? He
has left all these imperfections in us, because He
desires to destroy all our idols, and, first of all, that
great object of our idolatry, self. There is nothing
like a good, real imperfection to make us know what
we are. And when we are thoroughly convinced
that, so far from being on the road to sanctity, we
may think ourselves too happy to escape hell, then
we are in the best possible state to receive fre-
quently the Holy Communion. God, in His infinite
mercy, thinks that we do Him more honour by the
blind and headlong confidence with which we, His
guilty creatures, trust ourselves in such immediate
union with Him, than we should do by our dis-
contented and sullen reverence.

Above all, what was the design of Jesus in the
institution of the Blessed Sacrament ? Let us say
it boldly, for we are authorized to do so by all that
has gone before, the Holy Communion was meant
not only for saints, but also for the imperfect. Let
us not take the altitude of the Infinite by the
standard of our own narrow hearts, but by the
measures which He himself has given us. The more
I study the sacraments, and especially the Holy
Eucharist, the more I am astounded by the mani-
festation which they contain of God's indulgence

THE IMPERFECT 315

to sinners. They are a separate, a distinct revelation
of His stupendous compassion for our miserable
frailty. Not even the Passion could beforehand have
told us how often God meant to pardon sin. The
guilt of each separate mortal sin was so near infinity
as to require expiation by Man-God. Not till we
actually saw the unrestrained application of the
sufferings of Jesus in the sacraments, could we be
certain of how far He intended its virtue, infinite
in itself, to extend.O blessed Physician of the human
race! in dying Thou didst not forget Thine own
words, that Thou didst not come to heal "those that
are in health, but those that are ill."

Contemplate the sacraments, even the Blessed
Sacrament, and see if, with all its divinity, it is not
meant for flesh and blood, and not for angels — for
sinful flesh and blood, not only for saints. Nor does
it even confine its effects to those diseases of human
nature which by their very greatness and their
horror seem to acquire a dignity which renders them
worthy of the efforts of a God to heal them. There
are deep and dismal abysses of sin, into which we
are not surprised to see God descend to snatch the
soul from ruin, wild gusts of stormy passion, leaping,
roaring waves of maddening guilt, which seethe and
rage so fiercely around the drowning soul, that the
blessed feet of Jesus alone can smooth them down.
There are tempests which call for the voice of Jesus
to say to them : Peace, be still. O Lord Jesus !
there are times when we hear of sins which make us
understand Thine agony, and which no tears can
adequately weep but the red drops from Thy Sacred

316 THE COMMUNIONS OF

Heart. It seems worthy of Thee to soothe the
moaning of despair, to bring back hope to the
reckless, and, innocence to those so shameful that
they have lost all shame. But who could suppose
that He could be so compassionate to the very little-
ness of our strangely ignoble nature ? Who could
have thought beforehand that in His great Sacra-
ment, where, if I may dare to say so, He taxes to the
uttermost the power of His Godhead and Manhood
together, He should have legislated for its frequent
reception by the imperfect ?

The fact that such was the design of Our Lord, of
course, cuts off by the very roots the objections of
our imaginary lady, and it is worth while to dwell
on it. She evidently belongs to the very numerous
class of ordinary Christians. I cannot help thinking
that the ordinary ways of God's grace are consider-
ably misunderstood, especially by converts. I wish
to rehabilitate this very numerous middle class of
Christians, who are not sinners, and will never be
canonized saints. If we clearly understand that their
communions may be frequent, and the grounds for
that opinion, we shall also see whf t may be required
of them, and that more may be got out of them for
the glory of God than is thought.

For this purpose let us examine with greater
precision the principles which we have laid down
that habitual venial sins, if struggled against, need
be no obstacle to the frequency of communion.
Theologically it rests upon the opinion, that such
habits of sin do not of themselves destroy any of the
effects of the Holy Communion, though they may

THE IMPERFECT 317

lessen them in degree. If Our Blessed Lord has so
constructed His Adorable Sacrament that its graces
should flow into the souls even of the imperfect,
clearly He intended it for them, and that they
should receive Him as often as is possible. To state
this, however, so broadly is not sufficient. There
are many kinds of venial sin, and we must draw
some distinctions which will make the matter
clear.

First, venial sins may be actually committed at
the moment itself of communion. God forbid that it
should be so, still it is conceivable. Even in this
case, the whole of the effect of communion is not
destroyed. The augmentation of habitual grace
would still be infused into the soul, for this fruit of
the Blessed Sacrament follows uniformly, even when
there is no actual devotion, nay, when there is sin
committed at the time. The sole indispensable con-
dition for this effect is the absence of conscious
mortal sin. None, however, of the actual and
peculiar graces of the Blessed Sacrament follow in
the case contemplated. " The effect of this Sacra-
ment," says St Thomas, " is not only the increase
of habitual grace, but also a certain actual spiritual
sweetness, and this is destroyed when a man com-
municates with distractions, which amount to
venial sin."*

So much for actual sins; let us now consider

habitual venial sins in their effect on the fruits of the

Blessed Sacrament. I am not going to relapse into

metaphysics, nevertheless we must try to under-

* Summa 3,[Quest. 79, art. 8.

318 THE COMMUNIONS OF

stand a little psychology, that is, to study our own
souls, in order to understand the subject.

Who is there amongst us who has not observed a
strange phenomenon in our mysterious, complicated
nature ? Quite independent of our wills, from fre-
quently doing an action, good or bad, there grows
within us a facility in doing it, and a strong inclina-
tion to it, which amounts to a positive difficulty in
avoiding it. In each act of sin, the offender only
dreams of satiating the passion of the moment, but
all the while stealthily there grows upon him a new
quality, which imbeds itself in his being, and
gradually becomes a part of himself, It is a fatal
proneness to the sin which remains after the fit of
passion is over. The will has nothing to do with it ;
though it can, of course, avoid the individual act,
yet, if the act is committed, the habit comes on
without the will. It is a physical thing, like a
parasite disease, fixing its roots in our flesh, living
in our life, and poisoning our blood. That it is
independent of the will is evident, because the pro-
pensity remains when the will would fain get rid of
it, yet feels, in spite of itself, the terrible drawing to
sin. Nay, so little is the will interested in its con-
tinuance, that the propensity is not even a sin till it
is consented to; its existence, even when it is a
proneness to a mortal sin, is quite compatible with
a state of grace. An habitual sinner is absolved and
justified, though the habit, that is, the propension
remains strong within him. He has no desire that it
should continue; nay, he hates it, and he fights
against it. Precisely the same is the case, of course,

THE IMPERFECT 319

with a habit of venial sin. It may be in us against
our will. We may detest the vanity, or the anger, or
the sloth, or indulgence of our ease, which is in us,
and yet it remains in spite of us. We may even hate
it, and yet yield to it, in individual acts, because the
strength of it is not to be broken but by long efforts,
and is independent of our will. In one word, affec-
tion to the habit is something quite different from
the habit itself; nay, the fact of our committing acts
of that venial sin does not prove that we love the
habit.

Let us now apply this to the matter before us. If
a habit of venial sin is no sin in itself, and if the
guilt of the individual acts of it can be pardoned and
done away by confession, or by contrition, or by
taking holy water, or by hearing Mass, or in any of
the many ways in which the Precious Blood can be
applied to them, what possible irreverence is there
in the frequent communion of a person in the state
of mind such as we have described ?

The principle here laid down is so important that,
at the risk of being tedious, I will quote the words of
an excellent, though little known, writer on the
subject, Father Vaubert, of the Society of Jesus:*
"The dispositions of persons who commit venial
sins are exceedingly different. The characteristics of
those who have an affection to venial sin are these :
their aim is simply to be saved, and nothing more;
under pretext that venial sins do not lead to damna-
tion, they do not choose to deprive themselves of

* " La Devotion a N, S, Jesus dans l'Euchaiiste," vol. I, p. 183.
[Ed. 1752.]

320 THE COMMUNIONS OF

numberless little gratifications, dear to human
nature, but still, to some extent, offensive to God.
They will not put themselves out in the slightest
degree to watch over their hearts, nor make an
effort to avoid the occasions of them. They commit
them knowingly, coolly, and without scruple. They
blind themselves about their little faults, and make
a false conscience to themselves, in order to be at
peace, under the notion that it is impossible for them
to live in any other way than they do, and that they
are quite safe, notwithstanding their mode of life.
In a word, they look upon these sins as trifles, and
on those who avoid them as extravagant and
scrupulous. As for those, on the contrary, whose
venial sins proceed from frailty, though their sins be
very numerous, it does not follow that they have
not a sincere desire to make progress in virtue, but
that they are still imperfect and human; their
natural character is as yet unsubdued, and their
feelings are uncontrolled. In a word, such is the
strength of the habits which they contracted of
detraction, for instance, in small matters, or else of
indulging their inordinate love of ease, in number-
less cases, that they still fall into frequent sins,
although they have sincerely set to work to purify
their souls and to avoid proximate occasions.
Their consent to these sins is not entire : they only
commit them with a half deliberation, and they
grieve deeply for them, sometimes even at the
moment of committing them. Now, it seems to me
that there would be a manifest injustice in treating
these two classes alike. It would show a want of

THE IMPERFECT 321

discernment if we were to apply to both equally the
language of the Fathers with respect to venial sin,
in connexion with the Blessed Sacrament. When
St Ambrose says that we must communicate every
day, because we sin every day, he evidently does
not advise daily communion to those who habitually
and unscrupulously commit deliberate venial sins.
On the other hand, it is equally plain that St
Bonaventure does not point to venial sins into
which holy souls fall inadvertently, when he says
that these sins make the soul cowardly, negli-
gent, and unfit for Holy Communion, and even
calls the communions of those who commit them
4 unworthy.' If that were so, then those Fathers
would not only contradict other Fathers, but them-
selves also. How else are you to reconcile St
Augustine saying, that there are sins which should
not prevent us from communicating, with St.
Augustine when he tells us, that venial sins are like
a foul skin-disease, which makes our Spouse loathe
us ? How else will you harmonize St Bonaventure
with himself? He bids us in one place beware of
approaching the altar with lukewarmness ; in
another he says, ' Go to the Holy Communion, in
spite of lukewarmness ; if only you humble yourself,
humility will stand in the place of fervour.' It
seems to me, then, impossible to say universally
that venial sins are an obstacle to communion. It
depends entirely on the nature of the sin, on the
dispositions of the sinner, and the effects caused in
him by the Holy Communion."

It is evident that the principle is here laid down,

322 THE COMMUNIONS OF

that some venial sins are not an obstacle to frequent
communion. The same maxim is asserted also in a
little work on the subject, which deserves to be
better known.* " We must not confound together
the different kinds of venial sin. They are more or
less deliberate ; some have their roots in a certain
malignity of heart; others are committed on an
instantaneous temptation. Some are fully deli-
berate; others proceed from negligence and frailty.
Some are a cause of scandal to servants and
relatives; others are known but to God. The know-
ledge of all these different states may help a con-
fessor to allow or put off communion." It is plain,
then, that it would be untrue to say that all venial
sin is incompatible with frequent communion, and
unjust to class together sins which are so very
different in degree of heinousness as these different
kinds of venial sin.

Now that we are armed with these principles,
let us revert to our imaginary lady. I would answer
thus: You have nothing to say for yourself. Your
director is perfectly right to urge upon you frequent
communion. On the one hand, God has given you
an attrait for it. He has given you certain mystical
tendencies. Do not be frightened at the word; I only
mean that He has bestowed upon you a love for
prayer and a devotion to the Blessed Sacrament,
which I have pre-supposed all along. On the other
hand, frequent communion requires nothing extra-
ordinary, nor even an approach to sanctity, which is
something differing more in kind than in degree

* " Principes de direction pour la Communion Frequente."

THE IMPERFECT 323

from ordinary goodness. It only implies a genuine,
hearty wish to be better, and a real struggle with
yourself to get rid of your habits of sin.

Not only, however, is it proved negatively that
habitual venial sins are no obstacle to frequent com-
munion, because they do not impede its effects, but
many of the effects of communion are positively
intended for the destruction of venial sin. It would
be sufficient for me to point to the declaration of the
Council of Trent that the Blessed Sacrament
destroys our daily sins as well as being an antidote
to mortal sin. I appeal also to the Catechism of
the Council, which tells us that it is undoubted
that venial sins are remitted and pardoned by the
Holy Eucharist, and this testimony is the more
valuable because the Catechism implies that this
is clearly the intention of the Sacrament, since it
compares its actions to that of food refreshing the
daily wants of the tissues of the body. May I
not also appeal to experience ? I will not insist
even upon the opinion, which many hold, that the
Holy Communion directly remits venial sin, like
the Sacrament of Penance. I will only dwell on what
is certain, and that is, that the Blessed Sacra-
ment engenders in us, if not always sensible, at
least actual charity, which burns up our inclination
to venial sin. What is it that we all want but love ?
Why are we so lukewarm, so careless of offending
our good God, except that we have so little in us
of unselfish, disinterested love ? The habit of charity
is not enough ; it must produce burning acts of love.
The fountains of our heart must be broken up, and

y2

324 THE COMMUNIONS OF

out of their depths must spring up the latent flame.
It is even of importance to us to feel the love of
Jesus within us. It is a great help when it is
sensible to us as human love in its excess. This
is precisely what the Blessed Sacrament often does.
At the touch of Jesus the heart melts. The cold
stone is broken, and there gush out of our heart
spontaneous acts of love far beyond its natural
powers. They are not elicited out of our previous
dispositions, which are mere passive conditions and
not causes. Our souls are like a harp, over the
strings of which the fingers of Jesus sweep, so that
they discourse most eloquent music, heavenly music
which is not their own. It is this love which acts
physically upon habits of venial sin and destroys
them.

Nor must I forget to notice that effect of the Holy
Communion which is called in theology the diminu-
tion of the jomes peccati, of that which forms " the
fuel of sin " within us. What is the meaning of this ?
Every one knows that resistance to venial sin is less
in our power than the escape from mortal sin. It is
very possible, nay easy, for good Christians in ordi-
nary cases to avoid all mortal sin. We know, on
the contrary, that though we can prevent each indi-
vidual act of venial sin, in the long run we are sure
to succumb at last to some of the many temptations
which beset us. The reason of this lies in our strange
nature, half spirit and half flesh. We are psychical
men, that is, though our immortal part is spirit, yet
it is a soul animating a body, and it has gained
animal propensities in the process. A super-

THE IMPERFECT 325

natural state was necessary to keep this nature in
order, but that was destroyed in the fall, and we
have become what we are now, peevish, nervous,
irritable, hysterical, passionate beings, and yet
withal so lazy, so fond of ease, that we need a
perpetual stimulus to make us persevere in anything.
It is this animal tendency in us which is the chief
source of venial sin, directly, because it affords
matter for sin; indirectly, because it unnerves and
unmans us; it wastes our powers, and makes us
impotent to bear the pain of being continually on
the watch. Now, even on this animal nature the
Holy Communion does a wonderful work. Blessed
anodyne, how many characters it has changed!
how many uncontrollable feelings it has laid to
sleep! Black thoughts fly away before its potent
charm, like phantoms of the night before the dawn.
Dislikes and antipathies which seemed and were too
strong for us to overcome, are lulled to rest, and
fancied injuries, which seemed unpardonable, now
only provoke a smile. There are petty griefs of
which we are ashamed, and yet which may wear
our lives out by their constant gnawing. The
Blessed Sacrament assuages and soothes them.
There are failings of which we are perfectly con-
scious, on which conscientiousness and a stern
sense of duty have alike tried their hands and
failed; they melt away before frequent com-
munion. O blessed anodyne! harsh souls become
tender, and weak souls brave under thy gentle in-
fluence. Restless hearts, come hither, and He will
make you calm, for all these wonderful effects of the

326 THE COMMUNIONS OF

Holy Communion may be summed up in one word —
peace. After the tremulous joy of the act of com-
munion there comes a holy calm and a sweet repose.
It comes from the presence of Christ ; it comes from
proximity to God. We have within us the Godhead
of Jesus. Our little hearts bear within them that
Infinite sphere, which has neither shape, colour, nor
line of boundary. The creature lies still in the arms
of the Creator. No wonder the result is a passionless
calm. Even when, as will often happen from various
causes, the sensible effects of the Blessed Sacrament
are impeded at the moment of communion, yet the
soul, which keeps up during the day that pecuilar
watchfulness over self, which St Philip recom-
mends so strongly to those who have communicated
in the morning, will hardly fail to experience that
blessed peace which is the normal effect oj the visit
of Our Lord.

Furthermore, let us not forget that much of this
comes ex opere operato. This is not an unpractical
truth, nor an empty word. No truth is barren, and
no theological terms are empty. They mean, as we
all know, that these effects are caused by the sacra-
ment itself, and not by our dispositions, which are
mere conditions. If this be true, what wonder if the
effects are out of all proportion to the dispositions ?
If so, why are we scandalized when persons, in one
sense, utterly unworthy of so great a favour, go fre-
quently to communion ? They go there to have
effects wrought upon their souls which are super-
natural, and utterly beyond their own powers and
the forces of all possible nature. In this sense it is

THE IMPERFECT 327

perfectly true to say that the sacraments act like
charms. Let us beware lest, in exaggerating the
dispositions necessary for them, we deprive them of
their divinity. They are meant to make the sinful
good and the weak strong; what wonder if the
week and sinful approach them ? They were meant
for the paralysed, the fever- smitten, and the plague-
stricken nature of man. As Extreme Unction was
meant for the dying, and Absolution for dead souls,
so the Blessed Sacrament is meant for the weak and
imperfect. As well expel all mortal sin from your
confessional as deprive those who have still habitual
venial sins about them from Holy Communion.

Furthermore, we must remember that all these
are arguments for frequent communion as well as
for Holy Communion in general. It is argued that
imperfect souls were intended to receive the Holy
Communion, because of the beneficial effect which
it has in enabling them to get rid of their venial sin.
But if two communions are more beneficial than one
and give the soul greater power over habits of sin,
why not communicate twice rather than once ? If
there is no irreverence to any one such communion,
why should there be in two or three ? If a number
of communions make a soul love God more, what
possible reason is there why that soul should not
receive the Blessed Sacrament oftener ? But is there
to be no limit ? Yes, there is a limit, as we shall
see presently; but I know of none as long as the
Holy Communion continues to do good to the soul,
or else when the good which it does is not counter-
balanced by accidental evils. Salus populi suprema

328 THE COMMUNIONS OF

lex, is ever to be remembered when we are dealing
with sacraments.

I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that what
we all of us want most of all is confidence in the
mighty indulgence of God. It is safer to preach
unmitigated confidence in England than elsewhere,
for religious presumption is by no means an
English fault. Nowhere has a desperate gloomy
Calvinism flourished as it has in the British Isles.
Wherever religion takes thoroughly hold of an
English mind, out of the Catholic Church, ten to one
it will take some austere and gloomy form. Even
Puseyism began with a stern Novatianism. The
British God has always a tendency to be a tyrant.
Heaven defend us from such a God as this, a second
edition of Sivah, the destroyer. Even good Chris-
tians amongst us have sometimes a certain melan-
choly about their religion. Even our familiar name
for God is the Almighty, when a Frenchman would
say " le bon Dieu," or a German, " der lieber Gott."
I suspect we English priests hear more about des-
pair than others. Genuine, real despair is* perhaps
rare; what is commonly meant is discontent, or
bad temper with God ; yet, even this indicates the
general gloomy aspect of our religion. For this
reason, let us preach frequent communion. It seems
to me as if to us in England the Blessed Sacrament
was even more than it is elsewhere. All our ancient
shrines have been long ago destroyed, and the
relics of our saints scattered to the winds. How
different is the aspect of a Catholic country! We
have only to cross the Channel to feel in a Christian
atmosphere. Every walk may be a pilgrimage;

THE IMPERFECT 329

there are wayside chaplets and crucifixes, and the
place is poor indeed which has not a shrine of our
Lady within a reasonable distance. But where is an
Englishman to take refuge from the hurry of this
restless vortex of a world ? Where to be rescued from
himself? Where but at the feet of Jesus in the
Blessed Sacrament ? Even if we were to cease to
insist on frequent communion, yet weekly com-
munion might be far more general. To England,
more than elsewhere, it seems to me, do the words of
Suarez apply: " Ordinarily speaking, so multi-
tudinous is the business of human life, so many the
distractions which absorb the mind and take up
time, that men cannot more than once a week
receive the Holy Communion with due dispositions,
or give as much time as is fitting for it. Nevertheless
ordinarily speaking, there is no difficulty in being
fit to communicate once a week." Again, let us
remember the words of another theologian: " There
are few to whom weekly communion is to be for-
bidden." Communion once a week was, as we have
seen, the normal state of things for Christians during
the greater part of the existence of Christianity.
Why should it not be so again ? Are then, it will be
said, in this working-day world of England, mer-
chants, lawyers, tradesmen, labourers, to com-
municate once a week ? I answer, why not, if they
choose to prepare for it ? There are exceedingly few
who could not prepare if they chose. Many a poor
girl in London, whether dressmaker in Regent
Street, or coster monger in Co vent Garden, has been
kept from ruin by weekly communion.

Nothing can be more important than that all who

330 THE COMMUNIONS OF

have anything to do with the education of children
should inspire them with loving ideas of the Blessed
Sacrament. There are many who, by their teaching,
have rendered Holy Communion a perfect bugbear
to children. For Heaven's sake, let no one have a
terror of the Holy Communion! There have been
souls to whom the day of Communion was a very
torment, in consequence of the injudicious teaching
of most worthy persons. Above all things, let us
inspire those dear little souls with love for the
Blessed Sacrament. Teach them the doctrine. Let
them get it well into their heads that that is God,
and reverential fear will not be wanting to their
simple souls. Above all, do not frighten them by
anxious siftings into things generally to be ignored.
In one word, teach them love, and all else will
follow.

Let us now sum up what has been said in this
chapter : we shall see that we have made considerable
progress in ascertaining, not only negatively, what
does not prevent the frequent reception of the Holy
Communion, but also positively, the style of soul
(if I may use the expression) which ought to com-
municate frequently.

First, evidently, considerable imperfections are
no obstacle. There is a subtle Pelagianism in all the
arguments used against the frequent communion
of the imperfect. There are many persons, in whose
theology the doctrine that we can do nothing with-
out Divine grace, does not practically exist. They
are obliged to believe that there is such a thing as
grace; but they act and feel as if all improvement

THE IMPERFECT 331

depended upon self. The fact is, that we must make
all possible efforts to improve ; yet feel all the while
that they are rather conditions than causes of
success. The Blessed Sacrament will do more than
many efforts. Considerable imperfections, therefore,
are no reason why the soul should be deprived of
frequent communion.

Secondly,* though it is not necessary to have
vanquished our imperfections, it is necessary to
have the hearty will to get rid of them, and to set no
bounds to our longing to love God. The one essential
thing is, that there should be a positive, definite
struggle against our defects. The frequent com-
municant should be vir desideriorum, a man of
desires. He must have a desire for Holy Com-
munion, based on a desire to vanquish sin. Lastly,
he should have a desire for union with God and a
consequent attrait for communion with him in
prayer.

* The dispositions mentioned in this paragraph are more exact-
ing than those stated to be necessary in the Decree. They are
rather the fruit, which frequent Communion may be expected to
produce. See Decree Sacra Tridentina, No. 3. — Ed.

CHAPTER IV.* THE LIMIT TO HOLY COM-
MUNION

According to the principles laid down in the last
chapter, it may seem that I am far under the mark
in expressing a desire that the majority of Christians
should communicate once a week. As most pro-
bably by far the greater number of Catholics who
practise their religion are ordinarily in a state of
grace, and as the only condition for receiving some
benefit from the Holy Communion is freedom from
mortal sin, it would seem that the generality of
practising Christians might communicate every day.
If this were a legitimate inference, it would be fatal
to what has been said. The sense of Christians and
the common usage of priests would be plainly against
such a conclusion ; and in respect to the administra-
tion of the Sacraments, common feeling and com-
mon usage are all but infallible. All Christians feel
that, in order to communicate twice a week, a soul
should be, ordinarily speaking, better than one who
is allowed to receive the Blessed Sacrament only
once; in short, that something more is required for
daily communion than the mere absence of mortal
sin. The question, therefore, is already decided ; yet
it will be very useful to discuss it; because in the
discussion we shall learn, what it is of great conse-
quence to know, the limit to the frequency of com-
munion. It will be found that, speculatively speaking
two simple standards may be assigned, by which a
priest may measure the number of communions to

* This chapter should be read in the light of the remarks made
on p. xiii.

332

HOLY COMMUNION 333

be granted to an individual soul. It may either be
said that he may allow a soul to communicate
frequently, up to the point where the communions
would involve an irreverence to Our Lord, or else,
it may be laid down, that there is no limit what-
soever, as long as the Blessed Sacrament con-
tinues to do good to the soul. I believe, however,
that the two things, reverence towards God and the
good to the soul, will be found to be identical,
though practically a priest will find it more con-
venient to have an eye solely to the benefit of the
penitent.

First, then, there are many authorities, by no
means to be despised, in favour of the opinion, that
every Christian in a state of grace may, nay, ought
to communicate every day. I cannot help thinking
that Arnauld's book was partly provoked by real
laxity in the administration of the Holy Eucharist
on the part of some of his opponents.* Certainly, it
is curious that the very year in which " La Fre-
quente Communion " appeared, a French edition
was published, at Lyons, of a book written a few
years before by Sanchez, a Spanish theologian, f

* That there was some laxity in the casuists of the day is evi-
dent from the fact, that two of the answers made to the Pro-
vinciates were condemned by the Church; the " Apologie des
Casuistes," by the Jesuit Father Pirot, and the book published
by the Jesuit Father Moya, under the name of " Amadeus Gui-
meneus." The condemnations published by Alexander VII and
VIII, and Innocent IX, prove the same thing.

f This is not the Jesuit Sanchez, who has written the admirable
treatise, " De Matrimonio/' All the great Jesuit theologians are
against the opinion here combated. The prevalence of lax opinions
might account for a curious story, mentioned by St Beuve, that
De Lugo was opposed to the condemnation of Arnauld's book.

334 THE LIMIT TO

advocating the opinion that all Christians free from
mortal sin ought to be advised to communicate
daily. He claims a number of theologians in support
of his view; and it is remarkable that two Spanish
Benedictines are quoted by De Lugo as having
held that every Christian in a state of grace had a
positive right to daily communion, and could claim
it in spite of the prohibition of his confessor. The
same abuse continued in some places much later in
the seventeenth century. In February, 1679, the
Congregation of the Council published a decree,
sanctioned by Innocent XI, against the practice of
universal daily communion, which had grown up in
certain dioceses, under the notion that it was of
divine right. Nay, the Blessed Sacrament was even
carried to the houses of those who were in health,
and received by them in their beds. In the same year
the same Pope condemned the proposition, that fre-
quent confession and communion were a mark of
predestination, even in those who lived like
heathens.* As late, again, as the middle of the
eighteenth century, a certain Pere Pichon, a
French Jesuit, wrote a book to prove that the only
qualification for daily communion is freedom from
mortal sin, and dedicated it to the pious Queen of
Poland and Duchess of Lorraine. The author, after
being overwhelmed by episcopal censures, was put
upon the Index, and recanted his errors in a second
edition.

It would be of little use to evoke from their

* This proposition was maintained by the Friars Minors in Bel-
gium, " Jaeger Historia Ecclesiastica," vol. u, 332.

HOLY COMMUNION 335

graves errors which have been forgotten, if it were
not that the memory of their condemnation will
serve to prevent their ever being resuscitated. The
fact of their re-appearance at intervals, during a
period of a century, in such various places, and in
the teaching of members of such respectable orders,
is a proof that they have something to say for them-
selves ; as they rose once, so they might rise again. It
may, however, be considered now as a point settled
by the Church, that it is unlawful to teach that
every Christian in a state of grace may communi-
cate every day. Something more is wanting besides
the absence of mortal sin. There is some limit to
frequent communion. A priest would do wrong if he
indiscriminately allowed unlimited communions to
his penitents; and it is possible for penitents to
communicate too often. Ordinarily speaking, though
not always, as we shall see, the number of com-
munions should depend upon the goodness of the
communicant. All these conclusions, which, in fact,
are but one, flow from the condemnation of the
opinions which I have noticed.

But, furthermore, let us examine into the basis of
the opinion, and we shall then be able to see where
the mistake lies. Surely, it may be said, as often as
the soul is benefited and receives grace from the Holy
Communion, it may be inferred that Our Lord
intends us to receive Him. Now, it is commonly
admitted, that the sole condition for the reception of
grace from the Blessed Sacrament is the being in a
state of grace. Not even is actual devotion necessary
for this. A soul voluntarily distracted at the moment

336 THE LIMIT TO

of communion, still receives an augmentation of
grace. Our Lord infuses grace into the soul of a
Christian who commits a venial sin at the very in-
stant of receiving Him. If all this is allowed gener-
ally, if it is also undoubted that Our Lord loves the
confidence which approaches Him, rather than the
fear which separates us from Him, why, then, should
not all Christians in a state of grace communicate
every day, since every day they receive an augmen-
tation of divine grace, whatever their dispositions
may be, however little they may have prepared
themselves ? Surely, the infinite love of Jesus would
have us unite ourselves to Him as often as it benefits
our souls.

Such is the case for the opinion condemned. Let
us, however, recollect what has been said about the
effects which flow from the reception of the Holy
Communion. It is perfectly true that every com-
munion received by a person free from mortal sin,
produces an increase of sanctifying grace ; but actual
deliberate, venial sin, committed at the moment, or
else an indevout communion, hinders the sacra-
mental graces which are peculiar to the Holy
Eucharist. The reason why St Thomas pro-
nounces that a Christian in the habit of committing
venial sins may still communicate is because, by a
devout preparation for the Blessed Sacrament, he
repents sincerely of them, and therefore receives all
the actual graces of the Holy Communion. If, how-
ever, there is a wilful waste of grace, the case is
totally changed. In the same way it was argued that
there was no irreverence in the frequent communion

HOLY COMMUNION 337

of the imperfect, because a habit of venial sin,
without attachment to it, does not prevent the
reception of any of the kinds of graces attached to
the Blessed Sacrament, though it may interfere with
the degree and the quantity of them. Far different is
the case we are considering. It presupposes that the
sole qualification for daily communion is the
absence of mortal sin ; consequently that even when
communions are indevout, when habits of venial sin
have fearful possession of the soul, because the soul
consciously loves them, even then the Christian
ought to communicate daily. To every word of this
sentence, premise and conclusion, theology gives a
most emphatic nego. When communions are in-
devout, no penitent ought to be allowed to com-
municate frequently. The actual graces peculiar
to the sacrament are wasted. There are no burning
acts of the love of God, elicited by the presence of
Jesus, when a soul is so badly disposed. No super-
natural sweetness is infused by God. The whole
ground of the opinion which we are reviewing is cut
away by the assertion of theologians that some-
thing more is wanted for a good communion than the
bare freedom from mortal sin. The state of grace is
enough to prevent sacrilege, but not enough to
authorize unlimited communions.

But, it will be said, a person who communicates
daily will not make indevout communions. Now,
first of all, this is changing the whole hypothesis.
It is allowing what I am contending for, viz., that
devotion is necessary for frequent communion.
Secondly, I cannot think that daily communion, by

z

338 THE LIMIT TO

any physical or fatal necessity, ensures devotion.
This is not God's way. Devotion does not drop from
the clouds, nor does grace make its way into a soul
which wilfully puts an obstacle to it. Let us never
forget that we must do something on our part to
obtain these dispositions, and moreover, that they
are necessary. It requires a little thought to master
the idea that the dispositions are mere conditions of
grace, and yet necessarily influence its effects on the
soul. The action of grace, ex opere operato, has been
sometimes compared to that of fire burning wood;
the dryness of the wood is in no way the cause of
the application of the fire, yet it is a condition of its
catching. I would rather compare the infusion of
grace by the sacraments to the operation of God in
the creation of a new soul. God has in the natural
order no more august and solemn act than that. It
is a direct exertion of His creative power as truly as
when He first said, Let there be light, and simul-
taneously with the first dawn of light, myriads of
angels were born. The new soul is created out of
nothing. There is no pre-existent substance out of
which the soul is made. It is a new independent
spirit formed by God alone, and all the paternal love
rises up in the bosom of the Holy Trinity as when
they said : Let us make man in our own image. Yet
this most august act on the part of God is neces-
sarily chained to material dispositions. What is
more, though these laws are conditions and not
causes, yet they greatly influence the state of the
immortal spirit then created. If the brain which it

HOLY COMMUNION 339

informs is defective, it never rises to consciousness
of itself; the child is an idiot, and its powers lie
dormant without ever breaking out into act. It is
impossible to say how much prompt, quick, keen-
visioned genius depends upon the temperament of
the body. Here, then, is a great act of God, in-
fallibly following upon material laws, and depen-
dent upon them as its condition, though not its
cause, while, on the other hand, God's gift is
greatly influenced by them. So it is also with the
opus operatum of the sacraments. Grace flows, but it
may find itself obstructed by the bad dispositions of
the soul. It may lie inactive when it is received. It
may run like water off the cold, unreceptive rock,
which may be worn and wasted by it, but cannot
assimilate it ; and such is the case with God's actual
inspirations. No corresponding movement rises in
the soul to the embrace of God. The ice in its bosom
may even extinguish the fire of God's love. Surely,
if the dispositions of the communicant have so
great an influence over the grace received, that
communion may, in a very true sense, be called un-
worthy when the dispositions are such as to
destroy the peculiar effects of the Blessed Sacra-
ment.

Furthermore, so little is it true that the soul is
benefited by a communion under the circum-
stances described, that even the very grace which
the soul does receive is neutralized and rendered
inactive. Let us recollect what has been already said
about the necessity for actual grace to enable us to
make any use whatever of habitual grace. God has

z2

340 THE LIMIT TO

not, in justifying us, put into our souls a fund of
habitual grace, upon which we are to draw as we
please without any further aid from Him. It has
been already shown that habitual grace, though it
remains permanently in the soul, requires the con-
stant aid of actual graces to excite it to action, and
that without the continual influx of these graces
from heaven it lies inactive within us. It is impos-
sible to exaggerate our constant need of God.
We require to live and move in a supernatural
atmosphere of heavenly influences rained down upon
us at every moment, or else we die. We can never be
weaned from God; the older we grow the greater
seems our dependence, Nay, a saint is only a being
who has become so one with God that he clings more
constantly to His maternal bosom. He, therefore,
can hardly be said to be benefited by the Holy
Communion who, though he receives an increase of
habitual grace, yet cuts himself off by his in-
devoutness from the other graces which alone make
it active, and which are necessary to his spiritual
existence.

Let us ponder well the words of a great theologian
on the subject of indevout communions: "They
who frequently communicate without actual love
and without devotion, although they receive an
augmentation of grace, often do not show more
fervour in their conduct; both because infused
habits do not mortify the passions, nor take away
the feebleness left in the soul after the habits of vice,
as acquired habits do, and also because habits of
grace and charity do their work immediately

HOLY COMMUNION 341

through actual graces which are not given to
indevout communicants. For this reason it is that
they appear so lukewarm and languid in their
spiritual exercises. And because tepidity and the
want of actual aids from God negatively dispose
the soul to a grievous fall, therefore, carelessness
in this respect is very dangerous, for it disposes to
grave falls, and often brings down the curse of
God."*

The waste of grace, then, is quite a sufficient
reason why such communions as are described
should be dangerous. We cannot afford to lose an
atom of grace, for we cannot say that any one grace
is superfluous. There are, however, other positive
evils resulting from them besides the loss of grace.
No greater evil can possibly happen to a soul than
the loss of reverence for God. One of the principal
effects of the Holy Communion is precisely that
blessed, chaste fear of God, which thrills through
our very flesh, and tends to make mortal sin
impossible. Now, nothing destroys this feeling like a
series of free and easy communions. Let no one
think them a light evil. It is not too much to say
that our salvation depends upon the preservation in
our soul of the thought of God in its entireness. The
idea of God, which comes like a vision from heaven
upon the soul, is but too easily blurred and defaced.
It should be cherished as a precious gift from God
Himself. It cannot come from earth, or sea, or
heaven ; the voice of the sea is not mighty enough to
teach us what is God ; nor is the whole universe wide

* Viva, Dam. Prop. 23, Alexander VIII,

342 THE LIMIT TO

enough to give us a notion of the Infinite God. It
must come from the Word, illuminating every man
that cometh into the world. It may be a reminis-
cence of the first moment of its existence, the
feeling still fresh of God's first embrace when the
breath of life came upon it, the echoes of the first
whisper of the Spirit of God to our spirit. Or,
rather is it not the continued feeling of the pressure
of the presence of God upon it at every moment
of its existence in this world here below? But
whencesoever it comes, we have a fearful power over
it. Like God it is one, because it is an impres-
sion from God Himself, as from a seal, stamping
His own image on our souls. No part can be taken
from it without its destruction. Each attribute
is God, and you cannot eliminate one without
vitiating the whole idea of Him. Just so fatal in
its degree is any vitiation of our feeling towards
God. There is no sense so delicate or so easily
impaired as our sense of God. Our conception of
Him is made up of a number of elements, not
so much blended together in just proportions as
each possessing the soul without prejudice to the
rest. It is at once all chaste fear and all entrancing
love ; love and fear, each penetrating the other, not
confined to separate spheres within us, but diffused
throughout our powers, and rising up to God in one
great feeling of adoration.

Woe, then, to the soul whose reverence to God
is disturbed. The image of God upon it is not only
writ in water, but its outlines are confused and
run widely together. Its whole attitude towards

HOLY COMMUNION 343

God is wrong and the angels in Heaven would weep,
if they could, to see it approach Him with such
disrespect. You might as well take away an attri-
bute from your thought of God, as a feeling from
your conduct towards Him. Now, if there be one
thing more than another likely to breed irreverence
towards Him, it is careless communion. There is a
familiarity with God which is not irreverence, and I
am not talking about that. I mean preparations and
thanksgivings, either careless or non-existent,
without a rish or an effort to avoid sin or to lead a
better life.

Besides, we are such poor, miserable creatures,
that there is a limit to our devotion. Each com-
munion is or ought to be a distinct effort, and it
does not follow that because that effort can be made
with ease and delight once, it would be elicited twice
without a fatal weariness. I believe it will be found
that the average devotion of mankind cannot stand
more communions than one in a week, with the
addition of particular festivals. " Sitientes, sitientes,
venite ad aquas," St Philip used to say, and in
order to keep up this vehement desire of Holy Com-
munion, he would at times refuse his penitents leave
to approach the altar as often as they wished.

Moreover, the Church herself has consecrated the
principle, that it would ever be better to sacrifice
some increase of grace rather than incur the
tremendous risk of inducing in the soul any irrever-
ence towards Our Lord. For this reason it is not
allowed to administer the Holy Communion to the
dying, when their illness is such as to endanger

344 THE LIMIT TO

the rejection of the Sacred Host. Again, it is for-
bidden to receive the Blessed Sacrament more
than once a day, though in ancient times, instances
are to be found of holy priests celebrating several
times a day, out of simple devotion. Nor must we
forget that most remarkable instance of the same
principle,* where the Church calls upon her
children to sacrifice some additional grace to be
derived from the chalice, for fear of irreverence to
the Precious Blood.

I cannot conceive that, unless Our Blessed Lord
had known that no amount of accidental good
could possibly counterbalance the tremendous evil
to our souls of anything which would breed a habit
of irreverence towards Him, He would have allowed
the faithful to be deprived of any additional grace,
however unessential. Considering His Passion, we
know Him too well to suppose that it could be
from any dread of ignominy to Himself that He
thus inspired His Church. It would have fulfilled
all the essentials of redemption, if the Precious
Blood had been shed on the day of His Passion with
sacrificed solemnity. Angels might have received
it in golden chalices. It would have been tolerable
even if it had been shed on innocent, inanimate
things of God's own making. We can bear to think

* Concilium non voluit negare aliquam novam gratiam conferri
per calicem. Admoneo ex hac doctrina non fieri, ullomodo posse
aliquos merito conqueri de Ecclesia quod usum Calicis laicis inter-
dixerit, turn quia fructus substantialis et praecipuus in singulis
speciebus habetur — turn etiam quia hujus in sacramenti dis-
pensatione attendendum non solum ad suscipientium utilitatem
sed etiam ad ipsius sacramenti reverentiam. De Lugo, Disp,
xii, 3.

HOLY COMMUNION 345

of it on the green grass or the olive roots of the
garden of Gethsemane. O blessed Cross ! we do not
grudge it thee, nor even to the points of the crown
of thorns ; but imagination sickens when we remem-
ber how it lay on the stones and the dust of the
wicked city, to be trampled under foot by that
dreadful crowd; how it streamed on the hands
and clothes of the men who nailed Him to the
Cross. Surely, after that, it cannot be simply the
dread of irreverence to Himself which makes Him
dread the spilling of His Blood from the chalice.
Most willingly He would shed it over again, with all
the same circumstances of ignominy, if it could
possibly add to the chance of our salvation. But He
knew well that disrespect to Him would be an
irreparable evil for us, and, for this reason, He
would have us sacrifice the non-essential additional
grace of the chalice, lest even accidental irreverence
should produce in us a formal habit of disrespect
towards Him.

It is plain, then, that frequent communions in
those who are unfit for them bring positive evils
with them. Something more is wanting than the
mere state of grace, to authorize a priest to grant
them to his penitents; and, if a man has neither
desire nor devotion enough to prepare for two
communions a week, he had better content himself
with one than run the risk of growing careless and
irreverent towards the Blessed Sacrament.

Furthermore, at the risk of a bathos, I cannot
help speaking of another positive evil resulting from
over-frequent communions. It is a disease which

346 THE LIMIT TO

infects some of the devout, and which, for want of a
better name, I will call vainglory. Alas ! poor human
nature, can it be that from the Body and Blood of
Jesus you suck such poison — such desperate little-
ness from His Divine Heart ? Let us, however, deal
gently with them, for are they not dear to God ; in a
state of grace, we hope, and on their way to Heaven,
though after a long purgatory? Let us quietly
analyse together the disease which I have called
vainglory. I must say it has a basis which is
excusable. It is natural to wish to know that we
love God. We are glad to feel that our director
thinks so, and we look upon the number of com-
munions which he allows us as an index of his
opinion to that effect. Yet this, too, is one of the
unveracities of the spiritual life. First of all, it
might by no means be good for us to know how
much, nay, how little we love God. Let us look
bravely out of ourselves upon God, for there, after
all, are our hopes of salvation. We have been
absolved, we are very sorry for our great sins; we
commit the worst of them no more; we have every
reason to hope that we are in God's grace. For the
rest, we must trust in God. We lie in our little boat,
floating on the bosom of God's great ocean of mercy,
infinite depths below and infinite above; for such
is our condition here. God loves all His creatures,
and longs to save them all. He has proved it upon
the Cross. Nay, we have every reason to think that
He intends to save us. Has He not brought us to
His Holy Church, either from our infancy, or by
converting us from heresy ? We love the faith, we

HOLY COMMUNION 347

love the Blessed Sacrament. We love His Blessed
Mother, though too little, yet sincerely. All these
are marks of Predestination. For the rest, fling
yourself upon God's infinite love. Alas ! our little
Pharisaical mint and cummin will avail but little
at the day of judgement, if that does not help us.
Secondly, let us be sure that all this anxiety to
know how we stand with God has very much of
self in it. Each of us has before him an ideal of
himself, up to which he tries to act, and which he
would fain think real. Many a man worships this
pure abstract Ego, and, in Stoic fashion, would
make all his life logically consistent with it, feels
remorse whenever he falls short of it, and is sternly
glad whenever he attains it. They do not suspect
how little there is of God and His Holy Spirit in all
this. It is like the spectre of the Brocken, of which
we have read of old. A man sees before him a
gigantic figure, which he takes for a being of the
invisible world, little dreaming that it is only an
enlarged vision of self, swollen as it is by the
cunning witchery of light. Now, the first step in real
devotion, and in the supernatural life, is the
destruction of this spiritual idol, before which we
are grimacing and arranging our attitudes. Then
first we learn to give up our own views, and to fix
our eyes on God. So true is this, that even at times a
positive sin has turned out to be useful, if only it has
dashed to earth this idol of self, so that God's Holy
Spirit may build upon its ruins. Whatever flatters
this self-consciousness, whatever turns the inward
eye upon self, and makes us fancy ourselves good, is

348 THE LIMIT TO

an unmixed evil, if it were frequent communion
itself. Oh ! that we had quiet, unconscious devotion,
a thing, we may add, possessed by few converts.
Let us take this to heart, for, certainly, a desire for
an increase of communions, based upon this, does
not come from God.

Again, it must be said, this wishing to know what
opinion our director has of us is a delusion and a
snare. He, too, is not God, nor will he lead us to
God if we care in the slightest degree what he
thinks of us. If once you catch yourself speculating
on what may be his view of you, put the thought
down, for it is the beginning of all unveracity. A
certain regard for one who leads you to God no one
can blame, but when it comes to anxiety to be well
thought of by him, that is quite another thing.
Then good-bye to all reality. Hence heart-burnings
and jealousies. Hence thoughts that others com-
municate oftener than you, and consequent taking
of scandal at their defects. Hence ten thousand
littlenesses.

Now, let us pause and see where we are in our
argument. We have found many positive evils
resulting from over-frequent communion, each of
them quite sufficient to counterbalance the good
which accrues to the soul from the increase of sanc-
tifying grace. It is plain, then, on the one hand,
that the state of grace is not a sufficient qualification
for unlimited communions ; and on the other, what
is still more to our purpose, we have discovered that
the obstacles to communion are all such dispositions
of the soul as make the Blessed Sacrament accident-

HOLY COMMUNION 349

ally hurtful to it. In other words, a priest may allow
his penitent to communicate just as often as he
finds that it is good for him.

This, then, is what we have to keep steadily in
view, the good of the individual soul. A rule, you
will say, very vague and uncertain; yet, I think, in
practice you will find it not so.

Let us apply it by way of example to a familiar
case. A person comes to confession weekly; he
never or very seldom has mortal sins to confess, but
is perpetually falling into venial sins. Is he to be
allowed to communicate weekly ? There cannot be
the slightest doubt as to the view of theologians on
this point. For instance, Scaramelli says: " A
director can and ought to allow weekly communion
to all souls who have sufficient dispositions for abso-
lution. Such is the common view of confessors, and
such seems to be the present practice of the
Church." Suarez says: " Weekly communion is not
to be omitted on account of venial sins alone,
because it is already a great effect of the Sacrament,
to avoid mortal sins." St Alphonso's words are still
stronger: " As for those persons who are not in
danger of committing mortal sins, but who commit
ordinarily deliberate venial sins, without the
appearance of any amendment or desire of amend-
ment, it will be best not to allow them communion
more than once a week."* From these authorities it

* If St Alphonso's words were to be taken without drawback,
they would be contrary to Viva's view, that a deliberate affection
to venial sins is fatal to the most useful effects of Communion.
We must, however, not forget that they are to be taken in connec-
tion with the common opinion of ascetical writers, that deliberate

350 THE LIMIT TO

is evident that our imaginary person, notwithstand-
ing his venial sins, ought to be allowed weekly
communion. On what principle are we to ground a
practice so universal in its application ? Clearly no
other reason can be found except that the Holy
Communion is proved by experience to be of use to
the soul. The good of the recipient is to be con-
sulted notwithstanding the waste of a great deal of
grace. An inestimable effect is secured, the pre-
vention of countless mortal sins, and Our Lord
waives the consideration of the accidental dis-
respect done by the spilling of so much grace, in
order to secure this enormous benefit for the soul
of the communicant.

On the other hand, the writers quoted are per-
emptory in forbidding such souls to communicate
oftener, because a weekly communion is sufficient
for their good, while the waste of grace would not
be counterbalanced by any benefit accruing to the
recipient. Thus, in either case, the measure both
in the giving and the withholding of Holy Com-
munion is the amount of good done to the soul,
as proved by experience.

Many advantages are gained by the establishment
of this rule.

venial sins are, in the long run, sure to lead to mortal sins. The
case, therefore, so strongly stated is hardly practicable. A person
who came to confession every week would be very unlikely to
commit venial sins with full deliberation. If they continually do
so, then we must remember the opinion of St Alphonso, follow-
ing those words quoted above, that it is useful at times to deprive
them of Communion for a week. Thus much, however, follows
from the saint's words, that he does not agree with St Francis of
Sales, who says that an absence of all affection for venial sin is a
condition for weekly Communion.

HOLY COMMUNION 351

First, it enables us to eliminate all scrupulous
fears about irreverence to the Blessed Sacrament.
As long as real good is done to the soul, there is no
irreverence. Thus, if it be found by experience, as
I think it is, that the generality of practising
Christians can be kept out of mortal sin by a weekly
communion, then let them communicate weekly,
the priest in the meanwhile stimulating them to
do something for God, content, however, as God
is, to get what little he can. If he can get more,
then let them communicate oftener. Nor let him
even be anxious if he cannot possibly cure them
of some habit of venial sin. Let them struggle
earnestly and sincerely, that is enough. Let the
soul be militant and real, even though at times,
poor soul, it be defeated. Then in proportion as
habits of mental prayer are formed and dawnings
of union with God and mystical life appear, then
let communions be gradually increased. As for
daily communion, let it be very, very rare indeed.
Paucissimi, says Vasquez, very few are fit for it. It
may be that there are now too many daily communi-
cants.

Another advantage of this rule is, that it is not a
wooden one. It admits of a flexible application
according to the wants of the individual. In such
a subject-matter a more definite rule is impossible.
The Church has always refused to lay down a
positive rule, but has left the frequency of com-
munion to the judgement of the confessor. When,
for instance, on account of grave and most real
abuses, certain bishops were anxious to forbid

352 THE LIMIT TO

communion except on particular days, Innocent XI
in a decree which is the latest legislation of the
Church on the subject, forbids so stiff a rule, and
leaves the decision of each particular case to the
confessor: " The frequency of communion is to be
left to the judgement of confessors, who are bound
to prescribe to laymen whatever they consider to
be profitable for their salvation, according to the
purity of their conscience, the fruit derived from
the reception, and their progress in piety." We
must, therefore, look to the individual soul. Souls
cannot be ticketed and labelled, organized and
administered. No man can say, this class of soul
shall do this or that according to a wooden rule.
Each soul is to be studied by itself, to be watched
and prayed over, not to be talked much to, except
with a few kind, gentle, encouraging words, in order
to direct it, in plain terms, what it is to do, then
to wait quietly for something more that God wants.
There is to be no alteration of oracular precipita-
tion, and, on the other hand, of obstinate stiffness
and woodenness. God's Holy Spirit is its director,
and He administers it, not you, except as His most
humble servant. Have no preconceived notions. For
instance, do not say to this soul: Thou shalt have
a vocation, and thou shalt go into this order because
I like it; but say to yourself honestly: This soul
shall do whatever God's Holy Spirit wills, and she
shall go anywhere, to the other end of the earth, if so
be, to be active, to be contemplative, just as God
wills. In this matter, also, of the number of its
eommunions as in everything else, think what He

HOLY COMMUNION. 353

wants with the soul, and how the soul corresponds
to it ; study with what desires of Holy Communion
He inspires it, and act accordingly; only be sure the
desire comes from Him.

But how are we to know when it comes from Him ?
There is such a thing as discernment of spirits,
much neglected, indeed, now-a-days, nevertheless
very real, nay, very accessible to every priest, and
to be prayed for. There are marks enough by which
we may know a sincere soul when we see one. When
it has no illusions, when it goes straight to God and
forgets self, when it struggles with its sins and is
sorry for them, when it loves prayer, and in propor-
tion as it does so, let it communicate frequently, and
you are safe.

CHAPTER V. THE COMMUNION OF SINNERS

A thing exists which is the destruction of optimism,
and which, I confess, inclines me naturally to take
gloomy views of the world and of its prospects, and
that is sin. They can afford to take a cheerful view
of things in general whose knowledge of sin is con-
fined to the fact that men and women are some-
times hanged, and transported, and imprisoned;
but as for those who, in any capacity, come face to
face with sin, and do their best to grapple with it,
and who, therefore, know its awful strength, for
those who have to descend into the foul depths of a
rotten society and to work amongst its horrors, it is
very hard to speak otherwise than sadly of a world
where it exists. O beautiful world of God ! it is easy
to be happy in the merry springtime, when the lark
sings its song on high, as if its little heart was wild
with joy, and the chestnut-trees put on their robe of
white blossom; but look, down there is that great
wicked town, hiding unutterable things under its pall
of smoke, cloaca maxima of the universe. Look at its
great river, as it rolls down its mass of waters to the
sea, surging around the piers of its stately bridges,
how beautiful it looks glancing in the light, when the
setting sun dyes its black pools crimson and purple !
yet, we all know that the filth of a city is rolled along
in its depths, beneath the flashes of that intolerable
splendour. Just such is the huge city itself, and who
are we that we should plunge into its horrible whirl-
pools to save drowning souls ? The morality of
England ! I could laugh, if it did not move me to
bitter tears, when I hear the self-complacent folly

354

THE COMMUNION OF SINNERS 355

which is talked about it. There is not in all God's
universe a place where sin is more shameless and
open than London ! Away with all such unvera-
cities. While you are congratulating yourselves upon
the decency of your middle classes and the purity of
your homes, all who have an opportunity of judging
will tell you of the animal brutality of country
places, of the rude orgies of your sea-shores, and of
the systematic profligacy of your manufacturing
towns. We will keep well to windward of all this.
The only question with which we have to do is the
mode of remedying it.

We have nothing here to do with natural
remedies; indeed, I disbelieve in their efficacy,
except as auxiliaries. I have a thorough scepticism
as to the moral progress of man. I quite allow that
we have made great intellectual advances since the
Middle Ages; I am even prepared to admit that
medieval men were, in many respects, very like
savages ; yet I do not think that we are more moral
than they. As far as we can see by experience, the
tendency of merely secular civilization is to produce
disbelief in hell; now, without the doctrine of
eternal punishment, the belief in the Christian
notion of sin, as an infinite evil, necessarily dis-
appears, and with it the doctrine of redemption. The
atonement wrought by Christ and everlasting
punishment are correlatives ; if you take one out of
the creed, the other necessarily shares its fate.
Now, the tendency of civilization is evidently to
substitute respectability, decency, and honour for
the horror of sin; and there are wild passions in the

aa2

356 THE COMMUNION

human heart which laugh such frail barriers to
scorn. It may even be doubted whether a high
education has any tendency to diminish sin. It
may make men less noisy and less brutal, does it
make them less sinful ? The overwhelming interest
of intellectual pursuits may, in a few rare instances,
lull the passions to sleep for a time; but there are
only a few gifted minds who can thus be absorbed in
thought. The generality of the educated will be
always bad. Certainly, English and German uni-
versities are not famous for their morals. Then, as
to the masses who must ever toil and labour, whose
life must be ever material, it is a mere mockery to
talk to them of the blessings of education. You will
fill your museums with graceful statues, by way of
making them more moral. You give them a drop
from the cup of knowledge, enough to excite their
curiosity, and to raise in them a thirst which, like
eating olives, only creates a greater capacity for
sensual intoxication. In infinitesimal doses know-
ledge is not an anodyne. It is in vain to try to
make them better by rousing in them the lust of the
eye and the pride of life. I never heard that contact
with civilization did much more for savages than
teach them drunkenness. It intensified the effemi-
nate weakness of the islander of the Pacific, and
drove to madness the hardy Iroquois, inserting
vices among the virtues of his former Spartan
education. So with the wild creatures who issue in
crowds into the streets of our manufacturing towns,
when the bell summons or dismisses them, I do not
believe that education, apart from religion, will

OF SINNERS 357

make them less vicious. Nay, I doubt the virtue of a
Catholic gentleman unless he is devout. Would you
have us, then, return to the darkness of the Middle
Ages ? Nay, dear reader, God has placed us all in the
nineteenth century, and we must work there our
appointed work. Since God so wills it, we must
fling ourselves into that terrible melee, and grow
pale over our books like our neighbours. We must
educate our poor children to the uttermost; nay,
teach them that articles are adjectives, and the
girth of the equator, else they will be unable to
get their living. But forgive me if I take no interest
in mere education, and regret the simplicity of our
ancestors. I do not regret painted windows or
pointed arches, but I do mourn over the old devo-
tion. I regret the old blue Heaven, and the time
when men pointed upwards, and thought it was a
firmament, a solid thing, nay, the very sapphire
pavement of God's blessed throne, where Jesus
was waiting for us with Mary and the angels. Is it
gone for ever, then, the spontaneous outgoing of
the soul to God, so much a part of self that it was
unreasoning and unconscious? I hope not, pro-
vided, with all our education, we are loving, faithful,
and devout.

Meanwhile, the torrent of sin is surging horribly
around us. I cannot read without shuddering of the
dreadful statistics of sin, and who is there to oppose
it but the Church of God ? A new science is spring-
ing up, which chronicles crime, and professes that,
according to some unknown law, sins recur year by
year, according to some regular proportion. " In

358 THE COMMUNION

everything which concerns crime, the same numbers
re-occur with a constancy which cannot be mis-
taken; and that is the case even with those crimes
which seem quite independent of human foresight;
such, for instance, as murders, which are generally
committed after quarrels arising from circum-
stances apparently casual. Nevertheless, we know
from experience that every year there not only take
place nearly the same number of murders, but that
even the instruments by which they are committed
are employed in the same proportion." Dreadful
arithmetic, each unit of which represents a tragedy
where cruel lust, or the love of gain, or hatred, or
revenge, play their awful part ! If this be true, then
the wildest passions have their terrible rhythm, and
sing their mad songs with a beat, regular as the pal-
pitations of the heart, to the frantic tune of some
devil's music. Sin comes year by year in successive
waves, and there is a method in its madness, as in
the surging tides of the most tumultuous sea. There
is even a fearful regularity in the annual numbers of
public and registered suicides,* so that even the
accents of despair have a measure of their own, and
a system which can be ascertained. Thanks be to
God, we have a supernatural charm, more potent
than the spells of hell, to lull these passions to
sleep. In the case of each individual soul all these
calculations come to nought. You may, if you say
true, prophesy the number of crimes likely to be
committed in a year, in a given country, but your

* The latest researches of M. Casper confirm the statement of
earlier statisticians,thatsuicideismore frequent among Protestants
than among Catholics. Buckle's " Civilization in England," p. 56.

OF SINNERS 859

science is at fault, if you attempt to predict the fate
of this or that man. Now, it is precisely over
individual souls that the sacraments give us an
unrivalled power. The world may cry to us, " Who
are you who forgive sins ? there is none who can do
that but God." But we can only point with joy and
thankfulness to Him who has said to us: " Receive
ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit they
are remitted."

Never, at any period of the Church, were the
sacraments brought to bear upon the destruction of
sin as now. According to her present discipline, she
almost trusts now to the sacraments alone. In the
annihilation of habits of sin the Blessed Sacrament
plays a part greater than at any other period of her
existence. Never, at any period, was its action
denied. The study of its administration in the early
ages has shown us many instances, in the most rigid
times, when the Holy Communion was granted to
the most heinous sinners. Nevertheless, in many
other instances the Church trusted to severe
measures, to fasting and austerities, in order to
break the power of habitual sins. Now, however,
she has abolished that part of her ancient discipline.
Without having lost the right, she seldom exercises
her power of coercing her children. The nations have
unqueened her, and she revenges herself upon them
by becoming more than ever a mother. It is of a
piece with her whole modern policy. In almost
every case she trusts to the love and loyalty of her
children. She has not abandoned her undoubted
prerogatives, but all that she insists upon is a clear

360 THE COMMUNION

stage and no favour : room for her sacraments, and a
free course for the Precious Blood.

All this has much simplified the duty of a priest.
He has to eliminate from his mind all notion of
punishing a sinner. He is a judge, but one who
must ever lean to the side of mercy. His duty is
kindness to the sinner: his one object how best to
free him from sin. The universal condemnation of
Jansenism is the solemn protest of the Church that
absolution may be given at once to the sinner on the
minimum of necessary dispositions, and on the most
slender possible evidence of his possessing them, and
that it is her will to employ the Blessed Sacrament
as the most powerful means of curing sinful habits.
We have seen that the very essence of that un-
amiable heresy is the deferring of absolution till
penance had been done, and the suspension of com-
munion till the habit of sin had been broken. We are
spared the trouble of proving these most important
points, and we have only to study the action of the
Holy Communion upon sin, and to find rules for its
employment in this merciful work.

There is no question as to the lawfulness of allow-
ing the Blessed Sacrament in the case of those who
are guilty of single mortal sins, of whatever kind;
almost as a matter of course, absolution is followed
at once by Holy Communion. Nor is there even
any difficulty with a habitudinarian, that is, a sinner
who confesses a habit of sin for the first time. But
we will suppose the case of a recidive, as he is tech-
nically called, that is, one who is continually for
some time coming to confession with the same sin,

OF SINNERS 361

of whatever kind, intoxication, swearing, or what
you will. He comes to confession quite regularly
every week. He is not in any wilful proximate
occasion of sin, yet such is the force of habit, that he
at intervals, for a long time together, has to confess
more or less instances of the same sin. What are we
to think of him? can he be sincere? is he to be
allowed to communicate once a week, according to
the rule laid down for the generality of Christians ?
The resolution of these questions will oblige us to
consider a little more closely the phenomena of
habits.

As to the possibility of his sincerity, it would be a
waste of time to stop to prove it. Every one feels
that, because a man falls into sin to-day, it does not
follow that he was not really resolved not to commit
it yesterday. But I will go a step beyond this. I
believe that, in some cases, there is a certainty of his
being sincere at the moment of absolution. I mean
that, supposing at that instant the temptation had
presented itself to him, he was willing rather to die
than to yield to it. First, it is certain that, accord-
ing to the present practice of the confessional, the
habitual sinner would very often receive absolution.
In other words, there is a practical judgement on the
part of the priests of Christendom, that in such a case
a sinner is at that instant sincere, in the sense which
I have attached to the word. At their peril they
absolve him, because, except in rare cases which
have been touched upon, a priest is obliged to form
to himself a moral certainty of the good dispositions
of the penitent at the moment. I cannot help think-

362 THE COMMUNION

ing that this testimony is most valuable. Who can
tell so well as a priest ? Who but God and he are
witnesses to the broken-heartedness of the sinner ?
The Holy Spirit gives him a supernatural instinct
over and above that which he has acquired through
long intercourse with souls. Who, like a priest, can
judge of souls, who lay themselves open to him as
much as one man can make himself known to
another ? As for myself, I can only say that my own
experience has made me think more highly of man-
kind than ever I did before. It has given me a
glimpse of the feelings of Jesus towards poor human
nature, so powerfully attracted to good, yet so
miserably weak under temptation.

I know that it has been said in former times by a
famous French preacher, and an authority not to be
despised, that a very great many absolutions are in-
valid ; but I must confess that I am a weak brother
in this instance, and that the proposition scandalizes
me. I cannot bear to think of such a waste of the
Precious Blood, and I do not believe that God
would permit it. The thought would paralyse all the
efforts of priests. It would reduce their office to a
miserable sham. Nothing could be more fatal to
sinners if such an idea got abroad, for one of their
most powerful motives to resisting the temptation
to fall again into sin, is the thought that they are
again in a state of grace. The statement seems to me
to be one of those many echoes of Jansenism which
startle us so often in the writers of the period.*

* " II y a done bien des confessions nulles ? J'en conviens, et
la-dessus n'oserais pas presque declarer tout ce que je pense." —
Bourdaloue, " Pensees sur le Sacrement de Penitence."

OF SINNERS 363

Furthermore, it seems to me that theology is
strongly against such a painful assertion. Let us
remember how St Alphonso insists upon its being
the duty of a priest not to give absolution unless he
has a moral certainty of the adequate dispositions of
his penitent. On the other hand, let us see what he
considers sufficient. A recidive, he says, is not to be
absolved without what he calls extraordinary marks
of contrition. Amongst them he reckons the coming to
confession at a time when there is no external motive
to do so ; as, for instance, when no pressure of Paschal
duty urges him on, if he has put himself to incon-
venience in order to approach the sacraments.
What greater proof can there be that the saint con-
siders in such a case the spontaneous coming to
confession in itself to be a considerable presumption
in favour of the good dispositions of the penitent ?
Let us consider all that is involved in the act of
approaching the Sacrament of Penance in the case
of a good Catholic, who has the faith in him. What
should bring him to confession at all but the strong
wish to be in favour with God, and to get rid of his
sins ? The time is passed when the world recom-
pensed devotion. Tartuffe might be a reality in the
seventeenth century; he could hardly exist in the
nineteenth. One advantage of the present abnormal
position of the Church is, that it has cleared us of
hypocrites. When a man may proclaim himself on
the housetops to be Turk, Jew, or Infidel, there is
little merit in sincerity, and little temptation to be
false. The chances are enormously in favour of a
conversion to the Catholic Church being thoroughly

364 THE COMMUNION

sincere. So, too, with confession; what possible
reason has a man for going to confess his sins week
after week, except that he is manfully struggling
with a bad habit, and determined by the grace of
God to overcome it ? I am supposing that he has
diligently prepared himself. He has in the quiet of
his solitude put himself face to face with God. He
has heartily detested his sin before the crucifix and
the Blessed Sacrament. He has resolved to die
rather than commit it again. He has made up his
mind to a humiliating confession to a fellow-creature
who may be weary of hearing the same tale, who
may lose his temper and cast him off. I say that
here is every guarantee for sincerity. Besides, there
is nothing in theology to forbid our believing that
in the confessional, previous to absolution, there are
actual graces granted to the penitent, greater than at
any other time or place. Are we not told that the
act of contrition must be supernatural, and whence
should a supernatural thing come except from
Heaven? I believe that there and then the Holy
Spirit comes upon the poor sinner kneeling at the
feet of the priest, and often intensifies his poor act of
sorrow, so that his heart is filled with grief, and that
at that moment he would rather suffer anything
than commit the sin again. At all events, no one
can prove that I am wrong, and it seems to me more
in keeping with the character of God.

It will be well to insist upon this, for it is a ques-
tion which necessarily affects the conduct of a priest
towards such sinners. If he considers that they
most probably are insincere, if he doubts the

OF SINNERS 365

validity of the absolution which he gives them, it
will be impossible for him to be as willing to grant
them the Holy Communion as I believe he should.
I am not speaking of reckless and desperate sinners ;
there are few, indeed, of such who come to the
tribunal of penance at all. I am contemplating the
case of a sinner who demonstrates his sincerity by
coming regularly to confession, notwithstanding his
habitual falls, and I wish to vindicate his right to the
Blessed Sacrament, by showing that his subsequent
fall does not prevent his having a real, efficacious
determination not to sin at the moment of absolu-
tion. Our imagination is excited by the number and
the continuance of his falls. We ask ourselves if a
being who, after the most solemn promises, in a
short time commits the same sin again, can by any
possibility be sincere? Does it not seem far more
simple to say at once that he never was sincere;
by which I mean that, although he himself thought
that he was resolved not to commit sin, yet, in point
of fact, he really had never made up his mind to give
up sin and to love God ? Of course, if this view be
taken, the consequence is that he cannot be
absolved, and consequently, cannot receive the
Holy Communion.

I cannot think that this is Our Blessed Lord's
will : it certainly is not the way of the Church, as we
have seen. Furthermore, the fact of our wonder-
fully complicated and mysterious nature cannot be
resolved upon a theory such as this. Certainly, there
are numberless instances where men give the most
positive proofs of their sincerity at one moment,

366 THE COMMUNION

yet soon after apparently belie them. Who does
not remember the story of the great man who had
fallen a slave to the habit of opium eating ? He was
resolved to break his chains at any cost, and he hired
men to stand at the door of every druggist's shop in
Bristol, with orders forcibly to prevent his entrance
when the fit of desire came on again. Was it possible
to give greater proofs of real, efficacious sincerity
than such strong measures as this ? A literary man,
whose name was famous all over England for genius,
gravity, and virtue, publishes his fatal propensity
amongst the porters and cabmen of his native town,
and risks his reputation in order to render his indul-
gence, as he thought, impossible. Alas ! poor human
nature ! when the imperious desire for opium comes
on again, he repairs to the chemist's shop, threatens
with an action for assault the very men whom he
had paid to oppose his passage, and purchases the
drug. He shelters himself under no sophistry, for
he believes that this indulgence is criminal; yet
health, reputation, virtue, religion, are powerless
before the overmastering habit. What does all this
prove but the mobility of the will ? We are men,
not angels ; and a part of our condition as men is that
our will is subject to all manner of change. It would
surely be most unphilosophical to say that we do
not really will a thing at one moment, because at
another we will its contrary. Neither let us com-
plain of our nature ; if we are not fixed in good, like
the seraphim, at least we are not eternally stereo-
typed in evil, like the demons.

This, however, is not the whole account of the

OF SINNERS 367

matter; while, on the one hand, the will of the
opium eater was variable, on the other hand, the
habit to which he was subject was tending in him to
become something fixed. This tendency, it is true,
can never become irremediable on this side the
grave, for it is ever absolutely in the power of the
individual to overcome it by the grace of God ; yet
it must be allowed that the habit must be taken
into account when we weigh the amount of crimin-
ality involved in the act. It is the most terrible
punishment of sin that, by a law of our nature, each
act of wickedness leaves an effect on our souls which
predisposes us to another. It is the reward of inno-
cence that a very great guarantee against any sin
is the never having committed it; while on the
contrary, sin is punished by the fact that its
repeated acts produce a fatal facility in guilt, which
at last approaches to an impossibility of doing
otherwise. While the wild beast within us has never
tasted blood he is comparatively quiet, but when
once he has imbrued his lips in it there arises a thirst
which grows into a furious craving. All sin partakes
of the nature of opium eating.

Here, again, let us not accuse our nature or its
God. The law of habit tells in favour of virtue as
well as of vice. It enables us to be set in good as well
as in evil. We acquire a dexterity in all that is good,
so that we act well unconsciously, as a good musi-
cian plays beautiful music without an effort.
Chastity, gentleness, and temperance become part
of ourselves, instead of costing struggles beneath
which, in the long run, our feeble nature would

368 THE COMMUNION

succumb. We need not murmur, then, if the same
law takes effect upon us, in the case of guilt, and if
acts of sin as well as of virtue produce habits which
become second nature.

Woe to him who contravenes the laws of God's
universe ! Woe to him who by an act of mortal sin,
makes self the centre instead of God ! In that very-
self there lies an infinite capacity of evil, beyond
what we suspect, and when once the sleeping demon
within us is aroused by an act of sin, we have
unchained a power the result of which none can
prophesy. I am not going into the philosophy of
habits; we need only look at facts. Take the case
of a passion for drink. Who has not known instances
of men who would give anything to get rid of the
habit, and yet, humanly speaking, cannot ? A man
knows himself to be on the high road to ruin; health,
reputation, employment, all are going; wife and
children, nay, he himself, are starving. He has had
delirium tremens, and is threatened with it again.
He knows that all hell will soon be visibly about his
bed. I believe that man when he says that he would
give the wide world to free himself from the horrid
slavery of drunkenness. I believe him even when he
says that he is unable to do without drink. He has
created within himself an imperative craving, a pre-
ternatural void, boundless, and insatiable. There
are times when he is willing to immolate all that he
holds dearest on earth on the altar of this terrible
self. Like every other sinner, he has been expending
his own life, burning away his powers of body and
soul, and when the artificial excitement is gone, then

OF SINNERS 369

there come on the awful tedium and the infinite
ennui which make life intolerable till the passion is
satisfied again. His physical organization helps to
rivet his chains ; he has been overtasking and over-
exciting some of his organs, and he wants external
galvanic shocks and artificial fires to rouse them.
Nay, they suck up vital power from other portions
of his frame, so that all his powers go into commis-
sion to some set of organs, which cry out for inces-
sant satisfaction, and domineer over the whole.
Miserable power that we have to spoil our own being.
It is over-excitement which kills us, says a wise
physician. It is excitement rather than the love of
sin which leads us to do wrong, says the moralist.
Men would do anything to break the dull monotony
of life ; then sin once indulged grows into a passion,
and passion into a habit, and they are slaves. The
whole equilibrium of their being is destroyed ; they
become an incarnation of one vice. They have made
themselves after their own image, and they must
take the consequences.

I know nothing more dreadful than the power
of habit; yet there are two sides to the question.
Let us observe that this law of our nature takes
effect independently of our will. Each act, of course,
by which the habit is formed, is wilful; but the
habit itself, that is, the facility of sinning, which is
increased by the individual act, exists whether we
will or no. No one wishes to contract this evil quality
which superinduces a sort of propension to sin; and
which approaches to becoming a necessity. Men
wish to enjoy themselves moderately, not to be the

BB

370 THE COMMUNION

slaves of sin. The habit comes on, nay, what is
more to the purpose, it remains in spite of them.
It is, therefore, perfectly conceivable that a man may
have repented of his acts of sin, may have turned to
God, and yet the habit, that is, the propension to
sin, may remain. Let us never forget that, theo-
logically speaking, the habit of sin is not habitual
sin. Let us take, for instance, De Lugo's view of
the matter.* Habitual sin is that effect of mortal
sin, by which we are permanently hateful to God,
till it is pardoned. The act is done and completely
over; it has passed into things which are not;
nevertheless, we are in a state of sin ; there remains
something in us which makes us to be, as long as it
lasts, detestable to God. Now, De Lugo expressly
denies that this something is a vicious habit. The act
may have been a single isolated act, and have pro-
duced no vicious habit; yet, for all that, we have
contracted the stain of habitual sin. " Even sup-
posing," he argues, " the production of the habit
were in some way prevented, yet the man would
still be a sinner. Again, when habitual sin is taken
away (by forgiveness), generally speaking, vicious
habits still remain in the (pardoned) sinner. Or
else the vicious habit may cease, and be cured by
acts of the contrary virtue; but such virtuous acts
cannot take away habitual sin." It is perfectly
clear, then, that the propension to sin is not incom-
patible with a state of grace; it can co-exist, there-
fore, with a true attrition, with a firm purpose of
amendment; in a word, with sincerity.

* De Lugo. "De Poen." Disp. vn, sect, i .

OF SINNERS 371

Now, this is most important for our purpose. It
follows from all this that a man may, at the
moment of absolution, have a most firm purpose
never to fall again, and yet the overmastering pas-
sion may recur, and he may again commit the same
sin. It follows again that there are two sorts of
sinners under the influence of guilty habits; the one
sort have not in any sense been converted, and have
no real will to get rid of the bad habit. The other
sort really detest sin, and take measures to prevent
it, yet they fall because the habit is not yet rooted
out. The two cases are evidently utterly different.
The one falls into sin passively, under the power of
habit without a struggle; the other only falls after a
long combat, rises again at once, and is still resolved
in spite of all to overcome the hateful propensity.
In the former case the act of sin is intensified by
the headlong violence of the propension; and,
consequently, its guilt is increased. In the latter the
habit diminishes the voluntariness of the act, and
therefore the guilt is lessened by it.* Very rarely,
indeed, does the obstinate sinner frequent the
tribunal of penance, while the sinner who hates the
habit, as we are supposing, goes to confession every
week. Even when both confess their sins, there are
notable differences. The sinner who is sincere,
carefully avoids all occasions of temptation, follows
diligently all the counsels which are given him, and
the remedies prescribed, however painful; is con-
stant about his devotions, and prepares himself

* Peccatum non aggravatur imo videtur minus grave propter
consuetudinem et habitum praecedentem. De Lugo. Disp. xvi

sect. 4, 7.

bb2

372 THE COMMUNION

with care for the sacraments. The characteristics of
the other may be summed up in one word — care-
lessness. Is it not plain that these two sinners are
the antipodes the one of the other, and must be
treated in a perfectly different manner?

We are only concerned with the sinner who is
in earnest. With respect to him, we have arrived
at many truths from what has been said. Notwith-
standing the fact that the habit or propension still
remains within him, and his consequent liability to
fall into sin, he is most probably in the grace of God
after absolution ; for, on the one hand, that habit is
perfectly distinct from habitual sin, and does not
interfere with his being in God's favour; and, on
the other, his whole behaviour, his coming to con-
fession, his subsequent struggle, are all arguments
to prove that he was in earnest at the time. Then,
again the existence of the propension accounts
for what otherwise tells so much against him — his
constant falls. He has liberty enough, no doubt,
for sin, yet the awfulness of temptation at the time
of his falls must be taken into account. It is not
God's way to cure a sinner of the kind that we are
contemplating all at once. He must fight his way
back again to peace. Meanwhile, during the awful
struggle, God watches over His poor creature with
the tenderness of a mother, and the priest, who
stands in His place, must second His designs. In no
case has he more need to be CHRiST-like. His heart
must be full of compassion, his demeanour of kind-
ness. Not a word of reproach or impatience must
pass* his lips. The sinner, above all, requires en-

OF SINNERS 373

couragement ; he has need of all his faith to believe
that God still loves him, and that in spite of the
fiendlike power of temptation and of the frequency
of his falls, he will infallibly be cured of the fearful
habit.

On these principles, it is easy to answer the
question proposed as to the frequency of com-
munion to be accorded to sinners. The priest must
first carefully ascertain to which of the two classes of
habitual sinners the penitent belongs. It would be
a fatal error to apply to the careless sinner the
rules only laid down for the penitent who is in
earnest. An indiscriminate application of frequent
communion to all those who are involved in habits
of sin would lead to dreadful illusions and to mon-
strous falls. But when once the confessor has
satisfied himself of the sincerity of the penitent, then
let him act boldly. Frequent communion in such a
case is, in the long run, a specific. Here, above all, is
to be applied the rule which has been laid down,
that the only limit is the good of the penitent.

In support of this view, let me quote a recent
author who deserves to be consulted in all questions
connected with communion. It seems to me that
there may be cases in which the spiritual good of
the sinner requires that he should be allowed, for
a time at least, to communicate frequently, in pro-
portion to his needs, as soon as his dispositions
are such as to warrant his being absolved. Among
these cases I would instance states of great tempta-
tion, and of habits of sin not yet entirely rooted
out. Thus, when a confessor foresees that a sinner

374 THE COMMUNION

capable of absolution will fall again from the
violence of temptation, unless he has fresh grace
soon given to him, he may allow him for a time to
communicate once every two or three days, or even
oftener, if necessary. For it is certain that the Holy
Eucharist represses movements of the flesh more
than the other sacraments. We know by experience,
says Cardinal Toletus, that many Christians, who
were a prey to numberless crimes and vices, have
been so thoroughly converted by frequent com-
munion, that during the rest of their lives they have
never, or hardly ever, committed another grave sin.
It is for this reason that the Fathers of the Church
call the august Sacrament of the Eucharist a divine
alchemy, a burning transformation, where the
penitent soul is cured of bad habits, is purified and
sanctified more and more, is gradually made all
divine, and is changed into the likeness of God.
Saint Alphonso Liguori tells us of a fact which
bears upon this point. A nobleman was so miserably
enslaved by a terrible habit of sin that he despaired
of ever being able to overcome it. His confessor once
asked him if he had ever fallen on the day of his
communion ? On his answering that he never had, he
made him receive the Blessed Sacrament every day
for several weeks, and in a short time he was com-
pletely freed from this horrible vice.

We have high authority, therefore, for fearlessly
using the Blessed Sacrament as a remedy for sin.*
We, none of us, have sufficient faith in the opus

* " Principes de direction pour la Communion Frequente,"
p. 169.

OF SINNERS 375

operatum of the sacraments. You, above all, priests,
monks, and spouses of Christ, to whom He has
entrusted the glorious mission of reforming souls
lost in sin, do not forget that Jesus is above all the
Good Shepherd in the Holy Communion. An in-
stitution more dear to the Sacred Heart than a refor-
matory of any kind it is not easy to imagine. Yet,
in proportion to its dignity, is the fearful difficulty
of your mission. Sickly sentimentality invests the
sinner at a distance with the attributes of a Magda-
lene, but if there be any element of romance in the
attraction felt towards the sinner, and in the
vocation of those who have to deal with them, how
soon it fades away before the reality. Even when
want, and pain, and hunger have long since cured
the miserable beings of the positive taste for a life of
wickedness, yet the whole character is often utterly
spoiled and destroyed. What is there left to work
upon ? The soul that looks out of the hard, stony
eye, is lost to all sense of shame and degradation.
There is an animal love of ease and hatred of work.
The reckless outcasts from society turn fiercely
round upon their best friends as though they were
their gaolers. Who can bind down to regularity
the wild, restless creatures, and reduce to rule the
will which has been accustomed to follow every
external impulse ? Or, rather, all will has gone, and
has given place to the most irrational caprice.
When you think you are sure of them, in times of
calmest seeming a breath will raise a tempest of
fiendlike passion, or obstinate sulkiness, and they
who appeared but just now real penitents all at once

376 THE COMMUNION

show the rage or the sullenness of a captive beast.
Deep down in their hearts there lie the memories of
unutterable things, which will not rest, and ever and
anon rise up to taunt them and drive them to mad-
ness, while the body itself craves the excitement of
drink, and feels all the consequent restlessness of the
privation. What can be done with a being so spoiled
as that ? What motive can you put before those
whose feelings have lost all delicacy, who take all
charity as a right, who are impervious to gratitude,
and so wrapped in present fancied pleasures or dis-
likes as to forget that the past was a hell on earth
and to be ever recklessly ready to plunge into it
again ? All the beauty of human nature is trodden
out of them, while sin with its dreadful chemistry
has burned itself into their souls in characters of
fire. Above all, they are false down to the very
heart's core. Who can penetrate down beneath the
leprous crust of insincerity, and make them children
again ? Oh ! how quickly all sentimentality vanishes
before such an apparition as that. What a tempta-
tion to take the miserable creatures at their word
and bid them begone, when in some gust of absurd
passion they ask to go back into the waste howling
wilderness which awaits them outside the gates of
the monastery? How hard not to treat them as
parts of a great flock from which a tainted sheep
must be expelled, lest it infect the whole? It is
difficult not to became wooden, to act by in-
variable rules, and to sacrifice all to organization
and discipline. There is no remedy for this tendency
but the realization of the dignity of the individual

OF SINNERS 377

soul. Yes, it too has been redeemed by the Precious
Blood. Jesus loves even such a one unutterably.
That soul is to be respected and treated with rever-
ence, to be studied and cared for individually. The
Spouse of Christ must not shrink from contact with
such a being; she must bear with impertinence,
brutal rudeness, and irrational caprice. She must
treat such a one with separate kindness, and win
back the proud soul with the sweetness of Christ-
like humility. God forbid that the penitent should
be allowed to go, for to quit the convent is to
return to hell, while the sinner who remains within
its walls is at least within reach of the Precious
Blood.

Here, then, is our remedy for what is otherwise
desperate; an implicit trust in the action of the
sacraments. Let them have free course and be
glorified. There must be no restrictions on their
number; they must be no part of convent police or
discipline. There need be no nervous fear of dis-
respect in allowing creatures still so corrupt to
approach Jesus. He will accept the minimum of
dispositions, provided the bare essentials are there.
He will be indulgent to outbursts of temper, to
sallies of caprice, in one whose efforts to be
ordinarily good require struggles which in others
would be almost heroic. It is in such cases as these
that we must remember the supernaturalness of the
sacraments. I do not overlook the natural effects of
kindness. The very opening of the heart to a fellow-
creature is the shivering of pride, the destruction of
that terrible reserve in which the soul had wrapt

378 THE COMMUNION

itself up, and bade a sullen defiance to God and to
the human race. It is the rolling away of the stone
from the sepulchre; a creature can do that; but it
wants the voice of God to recall to life the mass of
corruption which was once a human being. O
Jesus ! her Creator, come forth with Thine
Almighty power, for there is a work which Thou
alone canst do. Here is a corruption fouler than
that which lay in the rocky tomb, a dead soul un-
buried and tainting the air, walking the earth, and
possessing the horrible vitality of infection. Oh!
see how Jesus loved her; He has wept tears of
blood over her misery, and now He delegates one to
pour His Precious Blood over her, and in His name
to resuscitate her. And hardly has she been restored
to life when He comes in person from the tabernacle
to assure her of His love, to calm the fierceness of her
passions, and to touch within her the very fountain
of her affections, and bid them flow out afresh
towards her God. The hard heart which had
stiffened into a fierce hatred of all living things can
feel again the joy of love.

Such is the mode of operation of the Blessed
Sacrament, and such are the miracles which it works.
The moment that our dispositions are sufficient to
remove an obstacle, then there flow down upon us
graces to which they were utterly inadequate. They
create new dispositions which did not exist before.
It is for this reason that all are invited to come, the
corrupt to receive incorruption, the unclean to
receive purity, the passionate to receive meekness.
They need not wait to have formed habits of purity

OF SINNERS 379

and meekness. Let them come as they are, with only
the will to be pure and meek. And because we have
still the wretched power to destroy the effect of the
Blessed Sacrament when temptation comes, because
the seven devils may return, for this reason the Holy
Communion must be reiterated. Fear not, poor
child, if you have only struggled in the meantime,
each communion has made you better, and each
fall leaves you less and less weak, till at last the
habit of virtue is established, and you fall no more.
Such is the ever-blessed instrument which God
has put into our hands for the reformation of a
sinner. I do not, of course, for a moment deny
the absolute necessity of natural means to form
habits of virtue. There must be patient, unremitting
kindness, and an imperturbable patient sweetness.
These are indispensable conditions of success; but
the real cause is Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

CHAPTER VI. THE COMMUNIONS OF THE
WORLDLY

We read much in spiritual books of the last century
of a large and troublesome class of Christians, ladies
especially, who attempted to unite together God and
the world. The discourses of Massillon and Bourda-
loue are filled with declamations against the mon-
strous union. In reading the memoirs of a famous
time, its festivities and its follies, it suddenly strikes
us, that all those brilliant beings were Catholics.
Amidst accounts of balls and theatres we come
across sermons of Bossuet, spiritual letters of
Fenelon, visits to the Carmelites of the Rue St
Jacques, benedictions and communions. It is a com-
fort to think that God was represented there, that
amidst their follies and their sins they said their
prayers before a crucifix, they knelt in confes-
sionals, and received the Viaticum when they died.
Yet, when we come to gather from the sarcasms of
a truculent Guillore, and even from the milder
warnings of Surin, that some of these worldly
women laid claim to great piety and were frequent
communicants, we must confess that a series of
unpleasant questions rises up in our minds. These
ladies, we will suppose, were models of propriety,
yet there are in Scripture most uncomfortable de-
nunciations against the world, even as distin-
guished from the flesh or the devil. Or can we by
any stretch of Christian charity exempt Parisian
society from being " the world ? " I think not and
if not, on what principle can those who are of it be
frequent communicants ? Is a course of balls,

380

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 381

operas, and all that is involved in a life of the world,
compatible with communicating twice or three
times a week ? Is daily communion (for such things
have been) to be allowed to a lady who lives in such
a round of gaiety ? Is the nocturnal ball a fit pre-
paration for the morning's communion ?

All these questions are perfectly distinct from any
which we have treated as yet, and require an answer.
Such things are not quite matters of history.
Human nature is not changed since the time of
Louis XIV, and probably we should find the same
heart beating beneath silks and satins in a ball-
room at Paris, Vienna, or Brussels in the nineteenth
century, as at Versailles and Marly in the first days
of their splendour. There must always be the same
tendency in mankind to enjoy both God and the
world. I am utterly ignorant of the fashionable
world in London, and I am quite prepared to
suppose that such anomalies do not exist there.
Without, however, pretending to any superhuman
sagacity, we may safely affirm that the time is not
far distant when such may be the case. There is
no likelihood that the work of conversion amongst
the higher classes should cease, the number of
Catholics, therefore, brought into direct contact
with the world must necessarily increase. The
world, which is of no religion, and piques itself upon
its liberality, will receive them with open arms. We
believe, then, that the question is at present specu-
lative, it may, however, soon become practical. Let
us put it then plainly in a concrete shape, and ask
whether the gaieties of a London season are com-
patible with frequent communion?

382 THE HOLY COMMUNION

If a Pagan were to take up the New Testament
by chance, he would certainly be puzzled by what is
said there about the world. He might even fancy
that there was some inconsistency in it. On the one
hand, with what yearning love and tenderness is
it spoken of ? " God so loved the world that He
sent His only-begotten Son." " God sent not His
Son into the world to judge the world, but that
the world may be saved by Him." Our very hearts
leap within us for joy when we hear Jesus call Him-
self Salvator Mundi, Lux mundi — the Saviour of the
world, the Light of the world. O Blessed Jesus !
why is Thy curse upon that world of Thine deep
in proportion to the depth of Thy love for it ? Why
on the eve of Thy death except it from Thy prayer ?
Why art Thou so tender and so kind to sinners,
so hopeful to the end of their conversion, while, as
for the world, Thou dost treat it as Thy desperate
enemy, as though there was a fatality upon it which
compelled it to hate Thee and Thine ?

The apostles take up the anathemas of Jesus. St
James says to us, " Know you not that the friend-
ship of this world is the enemy of God. Whosoever,
therefore, will be a friend of this world, becometh
an enemy of God." The apostle of love is the most
solemn in his warnings, "Love not the world, nor
the things which are in the world. If any man love
the world, the charity of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of
the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the
pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the
world." St Paul is not less energetic. He looks

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 383

upon the world as under the power of the Evil One,
for he speaks of '" walking according to the course of
the world, and according to the prince of the power
of the air." He considers that the very purpose for
which Christ died was '" to deliver us from this
present wicked world." Can anything be more evi-
dent than that it is a first principle of Christianity,
that the world is thoroughly and utterly bad ? Yet,
how careful is the same apostle St Paul to remind
the Christians that they still have duties in and for
this world. He modifies one of his rules expressly,
because if they followed it literally it would be
tantamount to quitting the world.* He legislates for
the behaviour of Christians at a banquet given by a
heathen, taking it for granted that Christians were
to mix with the great world. Evidently he who
wished us to be dead and crucified to the world did
not intend us to cease to be gentlemen, or to set the
laws of society at defiance.

Christian dogma presents the same twofold view
of the world and our relations to it. The history of
the Church has been a life-long struggle with
Manicheism in every possible shape. She has ever
hated the doctrine that matter is intrinsically bad.
Deep as is the corruption of original sin, she has
anathematized the Lutheran doctrine, that the soul
has become substantially evil through the fall. She
consecrates human joys, and respects all the legiti-
mate affections of the human heart. She teaches
that marriage has been erected into a sacrament.
She burns incense before the body of a Christian

* i Cor. v, 10; i Cor. x, 27.

384 THE HOLY COMMUNION

even when the soul has departed from it. Nothing
was ever so un-Puritanical as the Church. She
abhors the gloom of a Presbyterian Sabbath. Her
holidays are days of universal brightness. No joy is
excessive if it be not profligate; no beauty comes
amiss to her, provided it be chaste. She gives her
blessing upon all that is lovely. The walls of her
churches glow with the colours of the Italian painter
and Spanish maidens* dance before the Blessed
Sacrament. Yet, with all this largeness of heart, this
detestation of unnatural gloom, the ritual of the
Church seems to imply that a blight and a curse
have passed upon creation. The very blessing which
she gives to our dwelling places and our fields, and
to the choicest fruits of the earth, assumes the
appearance of an exorcism. She will not use the
oil, and the balsam, and the salt, nor the precious
gums for incense, nor even the pure, bright water,
till the oross has signed and purified them; as
though the breath of the Evil One had passed over
all creation, and the whole earth required redemp-
tion. It is a principle of Christianity that the world
is bad, and that worldliness is sinful. Riches are
spoken of as a positive misfortune, while purple,
fine linen, and feasting every day are the highroad
to everlasting fire.

It is evident that Christianity has a most peculiar
view of the external world. It looks upon it neither
with the jaundiced eye of the Puritan nor with the

* This seems to refer to the religious dance performed before the
Blessed Sacrament in the Cathedral at Seville, on certain occa-
sions— amongst others the three days of Carnival. The performers
are choir-boys and go by the name of los seises. — Ed.

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 385

licentious gaze of the Pagan. Volumes might be
written upon it, but for our purpose it will be
sufficient to say that earthly goods of whatever
kind, riches, pleasure, honour, are not looked upon
as evil in themselves, but as tending to produce in
the mind a certain positive wickedness called
worldliness. This worldliness is only not a sin be-
cause it is rather a state than an act, or, if you will,
it is a name for an attitude of the soul towards God
which is sinful.

Christianity has not so much introduced a new
system of morals as altered the whole point of view
in which men looked upon life and earthly goods.
It holds, as a first principle, that God is to be loved
above all things, in such a sense that, if a creature
appreciatively loves any created thing more than
God, he commits a mortal sin. Of course, this, like
every other mortal sin, requires, at least, the possi-
bility of advertence. For this reason, in a nature so
carried away by its emotions as ours, it is conceiv-
able that, at a given time, the soul might be so fixed
on a lawful object of affection that it should love it
more than God, and yet be unconscious of its want
of charity. When, however, the affection for an
earthly object, or pursuit for a long time together so
engrosses the soul, as to superinduce an habitual
neglect of God, and a continued omission of neces-
sary duties, then it is very difficult for the soul to be
unconscious of its violation of the first command-
ment, or, if it is unconscious, not to be answerable
to God for the hardness of heart which prevents its
actual advertence. It follows from this, that to

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386 THE HOLY COMMUNION

adhere with the whole force of the will to any earthly
thing whatsoever, however innocent, is sinful. God
is the only legitimate, ultimate end of all His crea-
tures. To be their final end is as much one of His
attributes as Mercy or Infinity, so that to place the
end of our being elsewhere than in God, is to deprive
Him in our minds of one of His prerogatives. This
one principle changes our whole mode of viewing
the earth and all that belongs to it. It transposes
the Christian's standpoint from this world to the
next. Wealth, pleasure, power, honour, assume a
totally different aspect when it is unlawful to pur-
sue them for their own sake without reference to
God. Let us clearly master this idea. We will sup-
pose a merchant entirely engrossed in the acquisi-
tion of riches. No one will say that to amass wealth
is in any way sinful. It has never come before him
to do anything dishonest in order to increase his
property, and he has never formed an intention
of doing so. Nevertheless, if his heart is so fixed on
gain that his affection for it is greater than the
amount of his love for God, even though he has
formed explicitly no design of acting dishonestly,
he falls at once out of a state of grace. Let him
but elicit from his will an act, by which he vir-
tually appreciates riches more than God, that act
of preferring a creature to God, if accompanied with
sufficient advertence, is enough of itself to consti-
tute a mortal sin. God sees his heart, and if, through
the overwhelming pursuit of sin, the amount of its
love for Himself is overbalanced by the amount
of its love for riches, that man, when adequately

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY |387

conscious of his state, is in mortal sin, and if he died
would be lost for ever. The first commandment
is as binding as the seventh, and a man who does not
love God above all things is as guilty as the actual
swindler or the thief. The case is precisely the
same with all worldly goods whatever; science,
literary fame, advancement in life, pleasure, ease,
beauty, success of all kinds, whether by the charms
of body or of mind, all these are of the earth earthly ;
and if any one of them is appreciated by us not only
to the exclusion of God, but more than God, we
are positively committing sin. The Christian's heart
must be in paradise, not here below. He must be
prepared by God's grace to give up anything on
earth rather than sacrifice his hopes of Heaven. This
is not a counsel of perfection, but an indispensable
duty. His final end must be to see God in the in-
visible world, not anything in the world of sight.

If any one had stated this doctrine to a heathen,
he would have been treated as a madman. A Pagan
would have perfectly understood that he must not
injure his fellow-men, that he must not pursue plea-
sure to such an extent as to harm his body or to
stain his mind; but he would have stared at you
as a portent if you had announced to him that he
must lay a restraint upon himself, because it is a
duty for a man to reserve his affections for anything
beyond the grave. If you would be great, fix your
heart on some earthly object, power, science, coun-
try; but if only it be high and honourable, then
pursue it with the full swing of all your powers of
body and soul; such would be heathen ethics at

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388 THE HOLY COMMUNION

their very best. The very idea of its being wrong to
love the world would never enter into their minds.
The word was not in their vocabulary, nor the idea
in their intellect. They might have arrived at the
notion that the unrestrained indulgence of the flesh
is wrong ; some of them believed in an evil principle,
in the powers of darkness, in Titans righting against
gods ; but before the shadow of the Cross fell upon
the earth no one amongst them imagined that
worldliness was sinful. It is an exclusively Christian
principle, because the Bible alone has expressly
taught it to be a duty to love God above all things,
and a sin to love anything more than God.

It is easy for us to understand now the meaning of
worldliness. It is a sin against Our Lord's chief and
first commandment, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God, with all thy heart, with all thy mind, and with
all thy strength." The soul, through culpable negli-
gence, is so utterly engrossed with earthly objects
that God has sunk in the balance of its estimation.
This is why Our Lord hates it so much. Everything
depends upon the first principle upon which our
actions proceed; the ultimate end of our thoughts,
words, and deeds. It seldom rises to our lips, or
appears on the surface, but it is quietly taken for
granted; it imbues and penetrates all our being.
With a worldly man it is the world, with a Christian
it is God. Hence all is twisted and distorted by
worldliness. No one thing is right because the whole
point of view is wrong. The worldly man tacitly
assumes that the world is paramount, and thus,
without any overt act, God has noiselessly lapsed

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 389

into the second place. Alas ! when such is the case,
God is nowhere. Heaven help the man then. First
principles are gone, what hope is there of recovery ?
The disease is structural and organic. The very
fever of passion is less dangerous than the slow
atrophy of worldliness. The salt has lost its savour;
wherewith shall it be salted ? The eye is dark ; no won-
der if the whole being is plunged in outer darkness.
For this reason, also, Our Lord always speaks
more hopefully of the publican and the sinner than
of the Pharisee, the impersonation of the then re-
spectable (Oh ! that the words should ever be found
together !) religious wor d. Poor children of s'n ! from
the touch of whose very garments the daughters of
the world would shrink as a pollution, in the depths
of your degradation, you have still one element of
conversion, that you are conscious of it. But there
are moral leprosies more hideous in the s'ght of God
than yours, because more irreclaimable and more
thorough. There is nothing in worldliness to alarm
the conscience, because it is quite consistent with
propriety. Its characteristic, as distinguished from
the flesh and the devil, is the being engrossed with
some worldly object, wh ch is not openly vicious, to
the prejudice of God. There has been no terrible
moment of awful rupture with God by an external
act of sin. God has been quietly extruded from the
soul by the growth of love for something else, rather
than directly expelled. There has been no catas-
trophe, no crash or fearful fall, to alarm virtue and
astonish respectability. The love of God has died an
easy natural death without a struggle or an agony.

390 THE HOLY COMMUNION

I think I hear it said: Is it possible that such
things can be? If worldliness be the absence of God's
love, the gradual, silent lowering of rel gion within
us till it is not sufficient to enable us to elicit an act
of sufficient sorrow for sin, then, of course, com-
munion is out of the question. But, is there not a
great deal of rhetoric in all this ? Is i not an exag-
geration to assign such deadly effects to a plunge
into a London or a Paris season ? Surely some of us
are meant by God to be in the world, and is it not
possible to be in the world without being of it ? May
not a person be worldly without losing the grace of
God ? Here are a number of questions which, I
allow, require an answer. I even allow that there is
some truth in what they imply; and we will try to
extract it from the great falsehood, and to exhibit
them separately.

It is perfectly true to say that many are meant by
God to be in the world. Truism as it is, it is neces-
sary to dwell upon it. Many married persons,
whether from education or from some other reason
which I cannot tell, have an uneasy kind of feeling,
as though the cloister was the normal state of Chris-
tians, and life elsewhere a sort of Christianity on
sufferance, tolerated on account of the hardness of
our hearts; and only not bad without being posi-
tively good. Heaven forbid that we should think
thus of the sanctities of home. A vocation to the
cloister is the exception. The majority of mankind
have a positive vocation from God to spend their
lives out of religion, and would be out of place in it.
Christianity has ennobled the domestic life, and
consecrated all its affections.

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 391

It is also perfectly true to say that it is possible to
be in the world and not to be of it. In order, how-
ever, for this assertion to be of any avail against
what I have said, it would be necessary to make out
this possibility in the case of those who give them-
selves up body and soul to the fashionable world.
Let us see how far it can be made out.

There is a strange tendency in human nature to
create worlds for itself. What we mean by a world
is an all-in-all, some particular pursuit, calling, or
state, which becomes to us the universe. The soul
of man cannot take in the whole earth ; whatever he
does has, therefore, a tendency to absorb and en-
gross him as though nothing else existed. Thus, the
great world comes to be divided into a number of
smaller ones, sphere within sphere, the inhabitants
of one being often almost as little to those of
another as though they lived in different planets.
Thus, we have the literary, the scientific, the poli-
tical, and the mercantile world. Each trade, each
locality, each street, square, and lane, tends to be
a little world. Thus does our very language bear
witness to the fact that the heart of man is ever apt
to be perfectly absorbed by something which be-
comes everything to him, and shuts out everything
else. His horizon is essentially bounded. Beyond a
certain point a sort of mental fog comes over him,
and shuts out not only God's daylight, but even the
other portions of the universe here below. Even the
holiest natural things have this tendency. Home
itself may thus become a little world. Especially in
England, where domestic affections are so strong,
where every man's house is his castle, and every one

392 THE HOLY COMMUNION

strives to be independent, and to concentrate under
his own roof all that he can possibly want, there is a
great danger lest the family should become the uni-
verse. A special kind of worldliness comes on, a cer-
tain family selfishness, by which the soul becomes so
engrossed in the narrow circle of home that God
Himself stands in danger of being excluded.

Whilst, however, anything whatsoever may be
turned into a world, it must be owned that some
things are more intrinsically worldly than others;
that is, they have a far greater tendency to exclude
God than others; and, of all others, the most
worldly is the fashionable world. All other things
have something in them which can be turned to
God. All involve some work, some duty, some self-
sacrifice. At the very worst they want but God to
penetrate them in order to be in their place. A wife
can never love her husband and children too well,
provided she loves God above all. But how can God
enter into a mode of life of which pleasure is the sole
occupation — the ultimate end? It is like a proxi-
mate occasion of sin, it must be abandoned ; it can-
not be turned to God. The meekest of saints* has
told us that balls are to be enjoyed as we eat mush-
rooms, few in number and far between ; what would
he have said if these mushrooms became the staple
food, and life is turned into a long, wild dance ? No
one but a Puritan ever said that dancing was wrong,
or concerts offensive to God, or even the theatre a
mortal sin; but it is the whole mode of life that is

* " The Devout Life," by St Francis of Sales, Part III, ch.
xxxiii,

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 393

hopelessly, desperately wrong. It is positively sinful
to make pleasure the end of life. It is sinful, because
it absorbs the soul, and it tends inevitably to f orget-
fulness of God. Yes, thank Heaven, it is possible to
be in the world and not to be of it ; but it is absurd to
say that one is not worldly who plunges into all the
gaieties of Paris or London, who enjoys and is so
engrossed with them as practically to forget the
sense of duty. As well tell me that concupiscence
is not the flesh, or witchcraft the devil, as that the
London season is not the world. How, then, can he
not be worldly, who is so far engrossed in it as to
neglect his duty to God ?

Nor is it only because God is forgotten that world-
liness is wrong. As might be expected, the whole
character is spoiled; and this is a thing to be
peculiarly observed. Many are deceived by the fact
that worldliness is not mentioned among the seven
deadly sins. No Garden of the Soul reckons it
among the black catalogue on which we examine
our consciences. No one dreams of accusing himself
of worldliness, yet it is part of Christian ethics to
consider it as awfully wrong. How is this ? We
might at once answer the question by saying that
worldliness is only contrary to perfection ; and as no
one accuses himself of not going on to perfection,
so no one dreams of making it a matter of confes-
sion that he is worldly. Yet, after all, is this answer
satisfactory ? Surely, a thing which is classed with
the flesh and the devil, a thing anathematized by
Our Lord, cannot be a simple imperfection. There
are certain faults which are not, strictly speaking,

394 THE HOLY COMMUNION

sins, but which run through a whole character, and
are more terrible sources of sin than even sinful pas-
sions. Selfishness, for instance, is not a special sin
forbidden by any of the ten commandments. It is
a tone of mind, a spirit, or as the old Greeks would
have called it, an ethos, which imbues and penetrates
the whole being. The uppermost thought in the
mind, the foremost image in the imagination, is
this pitiful self. There it looms, large, portentous,
engrossing, filling the whole field of vision, blotting
out God and the universe. The consequence is that
though not forbidden by any one commandment, it
either breaks them all, or at least is only accidentally
withheld from breaking them. When the selfish man
has to deliberate on any course of action, the shape
in which it intuitively comes before him is, " How
will this affect self ? " This is the mainspring of his
whole being, the ultimate end of all his actions. It
is to him what God is to a Christian.

Precisely so it is with the worldly. When a saint
would say to himself, on forming a resolution, "What
will be most pleasing to Our Lord ? " — when an
honest, God-fearing Christian would say, " What is
God's law ? " a worldly man's first question is,
" What does the world allow in this case ? " So much
has this become a first principle that he tacitly,
unconsciously assumes it. It has been incorporated
in his being, it is a part of himself. Now, what does
the world allow ? Everything which is not dis-
honourable. And what is dishonourable ? Nothing
which it allows. In other words, it has sub-
stituted its own code of morals for the Christian

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 395

religion. It has dethroned God, and set itself in
His place. It is wonderful how coolly this is
done. The world quietly assumes that, of course,
it is paramount. The world to come is shelved,
and the actual world reigns in its stead. God
says, " Thou shalt not kill." The world's command-
ment runs thus, " Thou shalt wash away dishonour
in blood." On Sunday men hear that hardly shall a
rich man enter the kingdom of Heaven. On the six
days of the week their whole soul is simply engrossed
in one single thing, the accumulation of wealth by
every possible means that the world permits, with-
out the slightest reference to the law of God. In a
word, the world, that is, human society, has set up
a whole code of morals, at the basis of which lies
the assumption that it is the standard of morality,
not God.

This explains to us many things which are to our
purpose. It shows us why worldliness, without being
reckoned among positive sins, is so productive of
sin. It is the tone of mind caught from the world,
and which tacitly assumes that human society is the
standard of right and wrong, just as selfishness
takes it for granted practically, that self is to be
consulted first in all things. The whole point of
view is wrong, and if anything at all is right, it is
only accidentally. Again, it shows us why the
fashionable world is especially, and above all, the
world. It is the quintessence of worldly society.
There are the model men and women who set the
tone in all things, whom others imitate, and among
whom they fain would be numbered. There, as in a

396 THE HOLY COMMUNION

high court of appeal, are enshrined and consecrated
the maxims of the world. As a tribunal of justice has
its unwritten modes of proceeding and its estab-
.ished first principles, controverted by none, and
taken for granted by all, so in this great world those
axioms prevail which are assumed like the Gospel.
We have seen that the first principles of the world
are un-Christian and irreligious. The whole tone of
conversation is based upon them. There is a spirit in
the air which whispers them. A miasma is inhaled
from that world which penetrates and imbues the
whole being. It gives out from itself an exhalation
like the plague. It is morally impossible to avoid it.
A man who abhors it may pass through it unscathed,
but I defy any one to love it, thoroughly to enjoy it,
and to live entirely in it, without being more or less
poisoned with its spirit, and thoroughly imbued
with its maxims.

We are now able to answer the plea, that it is
possible to be in the world and yet not to be of it.
It is possible on one condition — that you hate it.
There is no subject on which there are so many
fallacies, so many ambiguities, as the world. Because
the word is used in opposition to the cloister, you
fancy that you can live in the world and be un-
worldly. It is only of the world in that sense that
such a possibility can be predicated. But, if by the
world you mean the great world, the multitude of
men and women who make pleasure their one aim,
and who live according to the world's morality,
then 1 deny that you can be thoroughly in it and be
unworldly. To follow the same mode of life is to be

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 397

of them. Many urge in excuse that their position and
even their parents force them into it. Of course, if
such be the case, if this life in the midst of the world
is quite involuntary, it ceases to be sinful. It is
necessary, however, to ask one question. Do you
enjoy it ? Are you so far engrossed in the pursuits
and objects of the world, such as pleasure, admira-
tion, splendid alliances, high society, that they are
practically the end of your life ? Is God and the sense
of duty thrown into the background ? Is your exist-
ence made up of prayerless days and dissipated
nights ? If this is the case, then the spirit of the
world is upon you, and its poison has already taken
effect. It is possible to pass through it unhurt, but
not possible for you, for it has hurt you already. As
for one who is given up body and soul to pleasure,
who spends days and nights in a series of balls,
operas, concerts, one whose whole being is wrapped
up in all this dissipation, for such an one to pretend
to urge the possibility of being unworldly, is a
simple absurdity. She is worldly, ipso facto. She is
worldly simply because she lives in the world and she
loves it.

Let us now proceed to the other question. Is
it possible for a person to be worldly without losing
the grace of God ? No one can doubt the possibility
for a moment. Let us not, however, deceive our-
selves. What have we laid down that worldliness is ?
We have given various descriptions of it. First, we
have seen that worldliness is that state of the soul in
which it is so absorbed by an earthly thing, not
in itself sinful, that its love for God has either

398 THE HOLY COMMUNION

diminished or else ceased to be paramount. Sec-
ondly we have described it to be that state of mind
in which the spirit of the world has so sunk into a
soul that its standard of morality is the world, not
Christianity. These are two ways of looking upon
the same idea; and, of course, according to both
views, the disease may have only made a partial
progress, and may not be deadly. But the essential
thing is, to see that it is a disease. To be worldly at
all is to be offensive to God in some degree; to be
thoroughly worldly is to have lost the grace of God.
Worldliness is not an imperfection, it is a state of
mind hateful to God, and certainly inducing many
sins, and, above all, it is a state of the horror of
which we may not be aware.

Let us return for a moment to dry theology, even
at the risk of repeating ourselves. Supposing that
the soul, by any conscious act, so adheres to a
temporal good that it clings to it virtually more
than it clings to God, it has ceased to be in a state
of grace, even though that temporal good is not
itself sinful. In other words, if a man loves some
earthly thing to the exclusion of God, so that he is
at that moment ready to sin mortally rather than
to lose it, then that man is out of God's grace,
though he may not have committed any act of sin
beyond that act of adherence. Let me quote one or
two theologians to make my meaning clearer.* " A
venial sin," says Scavini, " may become mortal by

* I am indebted for these quotations to the unpublished pam-
phlet of a learned and valued friend. Scavini, De Vitiis, Disp. I.
cap. 2, art. 3. St Thomas, Summa, 2, 2, Quest. 118, art. 4, Quest,
148, art. 2.

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 399

reason of the bad disposition of the soul; for in-
stance, supposing a man, doing a thing venially
bad or indifferent, is in such a state of mind that
he would still do it although it were a mortal sin;
for by that evil will he shows that he already prefers
that thing to friendship with God." Let us turn now
to St Thomas, a far higher authority. " If the love
of riches should increase in a man so much as
to be preferred to charity, in such a sense that
for the love of riches he would not fear to do some-
thing against the love of God and his neighbour,
then avarice becomes a mortal sin." And still more
clearly: " Gluttony may be a mortal sin, if we look
upon it with reference to the turning away from
our legitimate, ultimate end, involved in its
inordinate desire. And this takes place when a man
adheres to the pleasures of gluttony as his end, for
which he contemns God: that is, if he is prepared
to act against the commandments of God in order
to obtain such pleasure." In other words, accord-
ing to the saint's view, the gravity of sin lies in the
amount of tenacity with which the will adheres to
an object to the prejudice of God. Supposing, then,
I only say supposing, a creature appreciates the
world more than God, according to the doctrine of
St Thomas he has already lost the grace of God,
though no other act of sin has occurred, and though
he may perhaps be culpably unaware of his state.

Alas ! is such a supposition so very wild ? How
many a virgin soul has Paris corrupted down to the
very heart's core ? In that Mcenad world there are
beings who but lately were school-girls in convents

400 THE HOLY COMMUNION

and who are Enfants de Marie still. What has come
to them that they look like daughters of Circe
rather than children of the pure and holy Virgin?
They have done nothing which could dishonour
them: but here again let us not deceive ourselves.
It is a part of the illusions of the present day to feel
secure as long as there has been no great evil of the
kind of which the soul feels most horror even in
thought. But there are other commandments be-
sides the sixth. There are six other deadly sins,
each a source of sin which may be mortal. What is
worse in the eyes of God than pride? When the
love of admiration and of worsh p rises to such a
point as to make the soul reckless of giving scandal,
careless of inflicting pain; when a little absurd
being uses her power of body and mind in order to
be set up on high as an idol, to be worshipped and
adored as a goddess, who will deny that here is
vanity to a degree which is monstrous ? Add to this
a portentous love of ease, cruelty to inferiors, envy,
jealousy, and a love of dress, rising to the dignity of
a passion; here are sources of sin enough, each
sufficient to shut out God. Alas! for poor human
nature, that such follies should stand in the place
of God; yet such is the experience of every day.
When once the soul is entangled in the giddy vortex
of the world, it clings with a tenacity to it which is
perfectly marvellous, and the result is a character
utterly spoiled and a heart thoroughly corrupted.
All this is to be remembered when it is asked
whether worldliness is a mortal sin. It is not a
mortal sin in the same sense as those which are

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 401

treated of in books of moral theology, or in lists of
examination of conscience, but it is a tone of mind
which, from the absence of God, breaks out into a
number of sins which may be mortal or not, accord-
ing to the degree in which they infect the soul. Nor
must we suppose that the Catholic faith will, of
itself, physically as it were, neutralize the effect of
the world. The very contrary is the case; world-
liness has a most peculiar and direct power to
neutralize the faith. Every one knows how evil
passions may co-exist and remain side by side with
the faith without impairing it. It almost seems as
though the faith existed in a different sphere in
the soul, and that sin was shut off from it and did
not hurt it. It is not so in the case of worldliness.
It sinks deeper into the heart than direct sin; it
seems to soak into the whole being, and to imbue
it thoroughly. The whole view of God is dimmed,
and He seems to retire far away into some im-
measurable distance, so that His presence is far less
felt than is the case with a state of tangible sin,
where His influence comes sensibly, at least, in the
shape of remorse. The rays of His blessed light do
not penetrate it ; the beams of His love strike coldly
on it, and seem to glance aside. The idea of His
sovereign authority is especially impaired by it
and for the same reason faith in the authority of
the Church is almost always shaken.

Thus it is that, apparently by some strange
fatality, worldly Catholics who lay claim to piety
have ever managed to be the chief support of
schisms and all rebellions against the Church. The

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402 THE HOLY COMMUNION

reason of this is obvious. The world troubles itself
very little about the faith till it appears incarnate
before it in the shape of Church-authority. It affects
liberality; a worldly man suffers his wife and
daughters to think what they please about Tran-
substantiation, to bow in prayer before a crucifix,
and to crown our Lady's image with flowers. But
what he will not tolerate is the assumption of juris-
diction by the Church. While, therefore, he can
bear the doctrines of the Church, he is frantic at
her censures. The world will not suffer that any
object on earth should be sacred to anything but
itself; and whenever a thing of this world has a
double aspect, a temporal and a spiritual, it ignores
the latter character, and chooses to contemplate
the earthly side alone. It is up in arms when a
bishop carries out the laws of the Church with
respect to marriage, or refuses to sing a Te Deum
over its sacrilege. It insists on the dominions of the
Holy See being looked upon as a mere temporal
kingdom, and sneers at the notion that any part of
earth can be holy ground. It is maddened out of its
scornful propriety at what it calls the interference
of priests with families. It acknowledges no ecclesi-
astical legislation on the subject of matrimony,
and is positively enraged at a vocation.

Such is the world's conduct towards the faith,
and the peculiar tendency of the worldly Catholic is
to become its tool, and to follow its lead. In all
schisms and all revolts against the Church, the
world has been able to point to the compliance of
Catholics, who had a semblance of piety, as an argu-

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 403

ment against the fanaticism of those who have
stood firm to the Holy See against it. Worldliness
had sapped the foundations of their faith, notwith-
standing their frequentation of the Sacraments.
Gradually the thought of God's Sovere gnty has
grown fainter and fainter in their souls, and in the
hour of trial they take the side of the world on the
first exercise of power on the part of God's repre-
sentative on earth. They allow themselves to be
taken in by the world's distinction between the
authority of the Church in matters of belief and of
practice, forgetting that she is the appointed guide
of our conduct as well as of our faith.

The tendency to schism, then, must be added to
the collection of sins of which worldliness is the
source; and since society in London is essentially
Protestant, the danger of imbibing an heretical
turn of mind from constant contact with it must
never be forgotten.

We are now in a condition to consider the ques-
tions with which we began this discussion, and to
ascertain the principles on which Holy Communion
is to be allowed to those who live in the midst of the
great world.

First of all, worldliness is to be distinctly taken
into account in the question, how often may the
Holy Communion be granted to a soul? This is a
self-evident axiom, yet it is by no means useless to
notice it. It is but too often taken for granted that
a soul free from grosser sins may be allowed almost
unlimited communions. Let us never, however,
forget that to be worldly is positively wrong, and

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404 THE HOLY COMMUNION

that, except in the rarest instances, to be living in
a constant round of pleasure is to be worldly. It
does not, therefore, by any means follow that a
person, raised by position above the temptation to
vice, is necessarily to be permitted to communicate
three or four times a week while she is living in
dissipation and gaiety. The question is too often
treated as though it could simply be reduced to
another: Is dancing, or this or that amusement
wrong ? This seems, however, to mistake the whole
point at issue; dancing is no more wrong than any
other gymnastic. The real question is, whether a
life spent in the pursuit of ease and tumultuous
pleasure, is not sure so far to separate the soul from
God as to render it certain that its communions
will be fruitless and indevout.

Secondly, as we have seen, the characteristic of
worldliness, in contradistinction to other states of
sin, is that the soul may be to a certain extent com-
paratively unconscious of it. For this reason there
is no repentance, no contrition, no struggle. In its
lowest stages, worldliness may be defined to be
tranquil acquiescence in venial sin. If there be a
state to which is applicable the rule given above
for the limit of communions, it is that of the
worldly. Frequent communion does them positive
mischief, for it tends to keep up in them that com-
bination of utter lukewarmness and perfect self-
satisfaction which constitutes their danger and
their guilt.

I can only conceive of one objection which can
be made to what I have advanced. If what I have

COMMUNIONS OF THE WORLDLY 405

said of worldliness is true, it would follow that a
worldly person could not communicate even once
a week, nay, could never communicate at all. To
this I make a two-fold answer.

1. Worldliness* is a disease which may exist in
almost endless degrees and stages. We will suppose
its lowest stage, the case of those whom it does not
betray into more than venial sins. In this case the
objection is not peculiar to the worldly, but applies
to all who have an affection to venial sin, and is to
be answered in the same way. Weekly communion
may be allowed them, on the plea that it preserves
them from mortal sin. For the refusal of more fre-
quent communion I can only quote St Alphonso's
opinion: "As for those persons," says the saint,
" who are not in danger of mortal sin, but who
commonly fall into deliberate venial sins, and in
whom there is neither amendment nor desire of
amendment, it is not right to allow them to com-
municate more than once a week. It would be well
even at times to deprive them of Holy Communion
for a whole week, that they may conceive a greater
horror of their sins, and a greater respect for the
Sacrament." On the other hand, then, the saint
allows them communion once a week, in order to
keep them from mortal sin; on the other, he ex-
pressly forbids them to communicate oftener, and
he advises their being deprived from time to time
of their weekly communion. We should not forget
his last memorable words. O blessed St Alphonso !

* This and the following paragraph to be read in the light of the
remarks made p. xiv.

406 THE HOLY COMMUNION

that all who imitate thy kindness to sinners would
equally follow thee in thy severity towards the
worldly !

Secondly, there are cases where worldliness has
become a chronic disease, where the soul is per-
fectly engrossed with and absorbed in the world,
and where God is practically forgotten. In such
cases I freely admit I do not see on what principle
Holy Communion can be allowed, except as it is
given sometimes to sinners of most doubtful repen-
tance, out of sheer compassion, for fear of their
being driven altogether from God.

CHAPTER VII. THE LIFE OF THE
FREQUENT COMMUNICANT

It is one of the misfortunes of us Catholics in
England, that it is difficult for us to keep completely
clear of controversy. Even when we are thinking in
the silence of our chamber on the dogmas of the
Church, insensibly we find ourselves looking upon
our holy faith in a controversial point of view,
raising up before our minds imaginary adversaries,
and asking ourselves what can be said to this or
that objection. This, of course, arises in part from
our polemical position. We are erecting the second
temple; enemies are all round about us; and we
keep the weapons of war close by the instruments
of building, ready at any given moment to rase
our war-cry. We cannot wish it otherwise; yet it
must be owned that this state of things has its
disadvantages. It breeds in us something of the
intellectualism of the age. Is there not in us some-
thing of that spirit of universal criticism which
characterizes the Englishman of the nineteenth
century ? We converts, especially, have a rampant
judgement, a habit which we have imbibed from
infancy of criticizing everything and everybody,
and it is hard for us to shake it off. Nothing can be
more fatal to the childlike spirit of faith.

Reader, we have suffered from this propensity.
There has unavoidably been an unquiet tone of
polemics throughout a book, the title of which pro-
mised peace. Let us now, however, at the conclusion
of our task, forget for awhile that there is such a
thing as error upon earth. If there is a place in the

407

408 THE LIFE OF

wide world where it is easy to feel like a child, it is
at the feet of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. We
kneel down and gaze at the tabernacle door, happy
in the thought that He is there. O Blessed Jesus !
if all the philosophers on earth proved it to be im-
possible, we should still believe without an effort,
like a child. It needs no obstinacy and no tenacity:
we know that Thou art there.

Blessed Jesus, we have dared to penetrate into
the secret recesses of Thy Sacred Heart in Thy
Passion! We looked upon it in His agony, broken
with disappointed love, and sending forth the
Precious Blood at each convulsive throb. We watch-
ed it pouring out its gushing streams of mingled
blood and water, after it had ceased to beat. Here
is a new state, a fresh marvel. Let us wonder and
adore. Deign to listen, Lord, while we repeat our
Credo at Thy feet.

Credo, I believe. The great Godhead is there.
Angels are all around in the silent, lonely church,
adoring Thee, while we, Thy sinful creatures, pour
out from our poor hearts acts of which they are
incapable. With heartfelt joy, we fling at Thy feet
all reasoning power, and we use our intellects to
frame joyous acts of faith with deep thankfulness,
and to say that all things are possible with Thee,
and to bow down our whole being before Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost.

It is a marvellous thought, that Thou art there
as Thou art nowhere else except in the Host.
Beyond the borders of its little circle, Thou art not
as Thou art within it. It is God in another shape

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 409

and form; our great God over again in a new mani-
festation of unutterable love; God attendant upon
and coming in the train of the Sacred Humanity.

Yes, Lord Jesus, we believe that it is Thou
Thyself. After all, this is the one thought which
occupies us. As all the mysteries of the Christian
religion are gathered up in that little Host, so all
the wonders of the Blessed Sacrament are summed
up in that one dear thought, Jesus is there. All the
sweetness that is contained in that marvellous
word, is all there. The Sacred Host is God and
Man; it is both together, and each without con-
fusion. There is the Sacred Humanity in very deed.
We adore you, blessed Feet, which the Magdalene
kissed, and bedewed with tears. Not more literally
were they held by her than they are now within a
few yards of us. Hail, dear Hands, once dropping
blood on Calvary; Arms often thrown around
Mary's neck, and stretched upon the cross for our
salvation; and thou, beloved Face, beautiful even
in the ghastly whiteness of His agony before the
bloody sweat came down. The Eyes are there,
from whose calm depths of lustrous beauty the
soul of the Eternal Word looked forth in love
upon the broad earth which He had made, eyes
that were filled with human tears, and met other
human looks with tenderest pity, and rained down
showers of marvellous love even from the cross
upon His murderers. Hail, blessed Lips of the Eter-
nal Word, which spoke as never man spoke; blest
portals through which the Sacred Heart poured
itself out in mysterious voices, which sound still

410 THE LIFE OF

out of the depths of ages, as living as the moment
they were uttered. Ye are silent now, but not with
the silence of death. O speak, gracious lips! No
Herods are here to ask for miracles out of profane
curiosity, but poor children of Thine, to whom one
little word from Thee would be the sweetest sound
that ever fell on mortal ears.

Yet, dear Lord, that silence of Thine is far more
eloquent than words. Thy whole state speaks far
more than even Thine own tongue can tell. Voices
come out from the tabernacle as we kneel before it,
and sink down into the depths of our souls. The
Sacred Heart speaks to ours, though the lips are
mute. This, at least, loves us, even though all sense
were sealed and impervious to us. Even though it
were true that every direct avenue from ourselves
to the Sacred Humanity were closed, yet mes-
sages from us at least reach the Heart. It lives, and
its life is love. His human activity is not suspended
there, even though it were dormant elsewhere. No
veil can hide our presence from His Knowledge.
Pour out your whole soul before Him, for He hears,
He pities and He loves; or rather listen, for He
speaks.

O faithful Heart of Jesus, eighteen hundred years
are gone since Thy life on earth, and here we find
Thee again, the same and yet how changed! The
anguish and the agony have disappeared with the
wild flutter of tremulous fear, and the dead weight
of blank sadness, the sickness from loss of blood, the
physical pain of convulsive throbs, and the last
struggle of the strong spirit rending its way in its

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 411

agony ; all these are over. But in the blessed repose
of the present we cannot forget the past. It is still
the broken Heart of the Passion. Blessed confidant
of all earth's sorrows, millions in each generation
since then have knelt before Thee, yet not all the
sum of their several griefs can reach to Thine, nor
has any sorrow in that countless multitude been
unfelt by Thee. O blessed Sacrament, there are few
countries in the world where Thou hast not been
since then ! What woes hast Thou not soothed, for
Thou hadst felt them all Thyself before ? Thou hast
been given to tens of thousands in the catacombs,
and hast visited the dungeon of the martyr on the
eve of death. Popes have borne Thee on their
bosoms n their flight, and exiled confessors in their
long fight for the faith have found their only com-
fort in Thee. Doctors have found light at Thy feet,
and unlettered monks have fed upon Thee in the
desert. Thou hast been the light of monasteries, and
the one joy of holy virgins. O Sacred Host, St
Perpetua dreamt of Thee, St Clare bore Thee in
her arms, and Thou didst fly without the aid of
human hand to St Catherine of Sienna ! But it is
not of all this that we think now. It is wonderful
enough that any human heart should contain Thee,
however saintly; but that Thou shouldst come to
sinners such as we, that Thou shouldst give Thyself
to the imperfect and the sinful, this is a wonder
surpassing all other wonders, and which eternity
will not suffice to praise.

We recognize Thee, Sacred Heart, in the Blessed
Sacrament. The passion is over, but even in the

412 THE LIFE OF

deep tranquillity of Thy Eucharistic life, Thou art
still the same. Then Thou didst carry all our sorrow
and taste the universal woes of earth, and now in
the Holy Communion we reap the fruits of Thy
universal sympathy. Thou didst suffer and die for
all, and even wide as Thy redemption must be the
distribution of Thy Blessed Sacrament of Love.
Now we understand the words of a dear old saint :
" Who could have believed it ? God has a want in
the midst of the plenitude of His abundance; He
longs to be longed for; He is thirsty that men should
thirst for Him."* Look at the altar rail; here is
God slaking His thirst. Enter into a London chapel
on a Sunday morning. It is no high festival, but a
common Sunday, when not even the few attempts
at magnificence which our poverty permits us are
displayed. Let it be in the depths of the city, in an
old-fashioned chapel with Protestant pews. Here
the church has no beauty that one should desire
her. No organ peals, and no sweet-toned choir
chants. Yet there is a marvel which kings and
prophets thirsted to see and did not see. They
throng to the altar; the priest in a low voice repeats
the blessed words, and gives to each his God. No
saints are there but good ordinary Christians, fear-
ing God in the midst of the world; some are even
great sinners who have been just cleansed in the
Sacrament of Penance. The same scene goes on all
over even this heretical land. No glorious bells ring
out over the length and breadth of England, from
spire and steeple, to announce the adorable Sacrifice,

* St Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 40.

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 413

but in our great wicked towns you may count the
communicants by tens of thousands. In Birming-
ham and Sheffield, Liverpool and Manchester, they
are crowding to receive their Lord. The same bles-
sed work is going on in lowly country missions
scattered up and down the country, where a few
worshippers still congregate to worship the God of
their fathers, in venerable chapels under the roof
of Catholic gentlemen, the descendants of martyrs,
where the Blessed Sacrament has found a refuge
through centuries of persecution. If such are the
scenes enacted in a country which has lost its faith,
what shall we say to the countless communions of
Catholic France, Italy and Spain? But there are
communions all over the earth. In Manchuria and
in China, in the backwoods of America, and the
coral islands of the Pacific, in Algiers and India,
men of every race and colour are receiving the Body
of Jesus at the hands of Christian Priests. Each
separate communion is a very miracle of love, and
each bears witness to the thirst of Jesus for union
with His poor creatures.

This has been going on for near two thousand
years, and will go on to the day of doom. Whenever
you catch a glimpse of the inner life of the Church
in times, long gone by, you find yourself in the
presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Who can count
the numberless communions since the first Mass
was said on the eve of the first Good Friday ? All the
generations of Christians who are asleep, waiting
for the resurrection each in his quiet grave in num-
berless churchyards all over the earth, or in the

414 THE LIFE OF

cloisters of ruined monasteries, and shipwrecked
men who lie in the depths of the sea, all these have
received their Lord over and over again in their
lives. The Blessed Sacrament has lain on hearts
which were once full of life and joy, and are now cold
in the grave. Jesus has soothed the sorrows of these
myriads of souls in their lifetime. How many death-
beds has He visited since Christianity began ? How
often has He been carried to the dying in missionary
countries, over mountains and moors, over rivers
and lonely lakes, across stormy friths and arms of
the sea, to Irish cabins or to Highland homes?
How often has He been borne on the bosoms of
priests, unknown and unrecognized, along crowded
streets up into squalid garrets in courts and lanes ?
Not the stars of Heaven, nor the sand on the sea-
shore can outnumber the communions which have
taken place from the beginning; and in each, great
as may have been the joy of the soul which received
Him, yet there was a greater joy in the heart of
Jesus at the moment when He united Himself to
H s poor sinful child.

No bridegroom ever met his bride at the altar
with anything resembling the joy with which Jesus,
in the Blessed Sacrament, finds Himself a home in
a human heart ! " Come unto Me, all you who labour
and are burdened, and I will refresh you." Come,
ye who work sorrowfully through the 1 velong day
to gain your daily bread. All who toil, whether
with hand or brain, Irish labourers and street-
sellers, poor sempstresses and factory-girls, come
freely to the waters of life. Come, all who bend over

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 415

your desks during the weary week, merchants in
the city, lawyers from the courts, and students
from universities. Life s tumultuous and dissipa-
ting: temptations are numberless. The world, the
flesh, and the devil are awfully strong; but, be of
good cheer, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament has
overcome them all. There will the young man learn
to be chaste, the poor to be contented, the man of
intellect to be humble. Come, maidens, to preserve
your innocence; and mothers, to learn how to love
your husbands and your children, for the love of
God. Come, broken-hearted sinners, here is an anti-
dote for the poison of sin, and a cure for the dread-
ful habits which well nigh drive you to despair.
Come all, and receive the Blessed Sacrament every
week,* for so the doctors of the Church tell us all
may do who struggle in real earnest to keep out
of mortal sin.

But you, above all, restless, weary souls, worn
out with battling with imperfections; or rather,
wearing out your own life with longing aspirations
after holiness, which seem to fly away. Think not
that your efforts are in vain. It is something to
thirst for God. " Blessed are those who hunger and
thirst for justice: for they shall be filled." Be not
afraid; your thirst for the Holy Communion is
only a faint reflection of the thirst which Jesus
feels for union with you. Be not kept back by the
sense of your own unworthiness ; the fact that you
long for the Holy Communion proves that Our
Lord intends you to receive Him often. To you
* Daily. — Ed.

416 THE LIFE OF

especially He says: " Come unto Me, all you who
labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you."

It seems to me that unrest and uneasiness is the
universal disease of minds in our time ; and that the
good are not exempt from it. We feel impotent to
love God, because the former outlets for the love of
God seem to be closed up, and we are all weary and
heavy-laden in consequence. In former times a man
would have left wife and children, have buckled on
hs armour, and gone on a crusade to recover the
Holy Sepulchre. A lady would have built an abbey,
and have lived in it after her husband's death, or
dedicated herself to serve the poor in hospitals.
There were definite things to be done for God, and
men lived and died happy then in the thought of
being able to do something to manifest to Jesus
their inward love. Now, however, a certain indis-
tinctness has come over our very religion. I often
ask myself what would St Elizabeth have done,
had she lived now ? Had she done in the nineteenth
century what she did in the thirteenth, she would
have been shut up in a madhouse. Imagine a young
duchess like her walking about with a coronet on
her head, and on a sudden impulse taking it off,
and throwing herself down at the foot of a cross in
the square of Wurtzburg, to weep her heart out
over the passion of Jesus; or else carrying loaves
of bread in her apron to the poor, or tending a leper
in her husband's bed. Cribbed, cabined, and con-
fined in all the trammels of modern society, com-
pelled by etiquette never to set her foot on the
pavement of London, she would run the risk of

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 417

pining her heart away, from the want of an outlet
for the fire burning within her breast. Conceive St
Catherine attempting to preach in Trafalgar Square,
as she did in the streets of Sienna. The Holy Spirit
would doubtless mould and frame her according to
the needs of the age; but naturally we cannot
imagine what would become of such a being living
amongst us.

The consequence of such a state of things is
especially felt by many who feel an ardent desire
for frequent communion. They cannot bear to feed
on the Blessed Sacrament as a mere portion of the
luxury of religion. It seems monstrous to partake
of the Body and Blood of Jesus so often and to
produce no adequate fruit. "What can I do for
God ? I am doing nothing, I am impotent," is their
constant cry. On the one hand, it is wrong to break
out into irregularities and extravagances, in defiance
of the laws of society ; on the other, each communion
lights up a conscious fire in the heart, which seems
to burn away the very life of the recipient with-
out apparently consuming his imperfections. St
Bernard's words seem ever ringing in their ears,
" How Thou lovest me, my God," without St
Bernard's power of making a return. " How Thou
lovest me, my God, and my love. I am never out
of Thy thoughts. Thou art ever full of zeal for the
salvation of Thy poor, miserable creature."* Thou
hast died for me upon the cross, and even Thou
dost give me Thine own dear self in the Blessed
Sacrament. What shall I render to the Lord for

* In Cant. Serm. 17.

EE

418 THE LIFE OF

all that He has done for me ? I will receive the cup
of salvation, St Perpetua and the martyrs of old
would have said, and drink the dregs of the bitter
chalice of suffering for the love of Jesus. I will
go through the wide world proclaiming Thy dear
name, and setting men's hearts on fire with the
flame which Thou didst long to kindle, might have
answered some great-souled Bernard or Dominic.
Hark to the blessed chant of St Elizabeth, a wife,
a mother, and a princess: " The kingdom of earth
and all the splendour of the world have I trodden
under foot for the love of my Lord Jesus Christ,
whom I have seen, whom I have loved, in whom
I have believed, on whom I have set my heart."
But what can we do for Thee, O my Lord ? There
are doubtless saints on earth now, although we may
not know them, and they may come and receive
Thee often in Thy Sacrament of Love, but we with
our languid hearts and impotent hands, how dare
we come near Thee, we who live at home at ease,
while the Church is militant and the tents of Israel
are in the field ? We seem to have no cross to carry,
save the dead heavy weight of our own sins and
imperfections. Surely he who frequently receives
the Body and Blood of Jesus ought to do more for
Him than those who seldom come near Him.

Yes, a truer word was never said ; frequent com-
municants should bear fruits in some proportion to
this inestimable favour. But nothing will be gained
by a sickly languid complaint, or a restless hys-
terical uneasiness. It is a part of our misfortune
that our tendency is ever to fix our inward eye upon

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 419

ourselves and upon the state of our souls. Hence a
subtle selfishness comes on. Self-contemplation is
the disease of us all, and the consequence of it is,
that almost all the world grows weary of interior
religion and flings itself wildly upon wide public
schemes for doing good, upon active committees
and associations of benevolence; while others pine
their lives away in the sickly sentimentality of disap-
pointed aspirations.

Let us avoid both extremes, and see what sort of
life can be led by those who feel impelled by an
ardent desire for frequent communion, yet shrink
from it on account of the little which they seem to
be able to do for God. There must be a life below
that of a canonized saint, yet above the world. I am
not at this moment contemplating the great saints
of God. They are a class apart, and few were even
meant by God to reach such heights of glory. The
Holy Spirit does not intend all Christians in that
sense to be saints. He does not give saintly grace to
all. Look at that beautiful ecstatica, with the blood
streaming spontaneously and silently from her
bleeding brow, and hands, and feet. Who will pre-
tend that all Christian women were ever such even
in God's idea ? Look at that beautiful vision of
Heaven, St Philip gazing on the Host which he has
just consecrated, his white face glowing with
heavenly light, and his very body floating in mid
air, carried upwards by his strong spirit of love.
Not every Mass was meant to be like this. Some of
us may be saints spoiled in the making. But the
generality of Christians were never intended to be

ee2

420 THE LIFE OF

canonized saints at all. We should be mistaking and
despising the ord nary ways of God's grace if we
thought so. Yet, God forbid that we should be like
the world. There are certain unmistakable cha-
racteristics which separate a good Christian from the
rest of mankind. It was not of saints alone, but of
all Christians that Our Lord said that they must
take up their cross and follow Him. There must
plainly be a certain peculiar character produced
by the frequentation of the Sacraments, short in-
deed of technical sanctity, yet far above the world.
It cannot indeed be denned, for a character is some-
thing too ethereal to be comprised in a definition;
but if I were to attempt to define a good Christian,
I should say he was one who was all for God.

It is very hard to describe what is meant by the
Christian fear of God. Of course in the world there is
no practical recognition whatsoever of the sove-
reignty of God. But I am not speaking of the world.
Some good persons are positively scared by the
thought of Him. When first it breaks upon them
that they and all they possess, their children and all
they hold dearest, are literally in the hands of an
absolute, irresponsible God,* who can with perfect
justice do what He wills with them, there comes a
revulsion upon their souls. This often takes place
with converts. The self-satisfied Pharisaism of their

* God is answerable to no one for His acts; but this does not
mean that He makes any arbitrary use of His absolute sovereign-
ty. He must act in accordance with His infinite perfections, His
wisdom, goodness, etc. " But Thou, being master of power,
judgest with tranquillity; and with great favour disposest of us."
Wis. xii. 1 8. — Ed.

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 421

former condition, when God is often practically
null, then gives place to a sort of normal state of
querulous discontent. His sovereignty lies like a
dismal shadow on their souls. They sit uneasily as
yet under all the tremendous realit es of eternity.
They are unaccustomed as yet to the character of
God which these reveal. This irrational fright,
however, is not Christian fear. There is a beautiful
tranquillity in a good Christian's quiet recognition
of the fact that God is absolute. How wonderfully
this thought of God covers in their mind all the
relations of life ? There is nothing outside God for
them. There is a touching simplicity in the way in
which, with perfect naturalness, without any draw-
back or reservation, without insincerity, yet with-
out loud profession, they wish to know the will of
God. There is no awkward reserve about them; you
can see down into the depths of their souls ; they are
clear and limpid as a pure stream before God, and all
that is God's. The stream spreads out its bosom and
tranquilly mirrors heaven only, and so do they.
And this distinguishes them from the others whom I
have described. It is so much a first principle with
them that God can do what He wills, that it has
become a second nature to them. They fear Him be-
cause He is God, but there is no shyness or timidity,
no cowardice in their fear. Above all, the thought
of offending Him deliberately never enters into their
minds. He is God, and such is His law. They may
sin from hastiness, from temper, from a thousand
imperfections; but deliberately, God forbid. The
chaste, blessed law of God follows them everywhere.

422 THE LIFE OF

It enters into their choice of a state of life ; it rules
supreme over the disposal of their children. Not
only, however, do they obey cheerfully and abso-
lutely God's positive law, but by a sort of perfectly
unconscious aim at perfection, they instinctively
always consider what will please God best. The
notion of a creature not doing what his Creator
wishes, even in cases where there is no definite
obligation, appears to them irrational and absurd.
Thus, in all their conduct, self is nothing, God is
everything. They act as if they had no personal
interest in anything. Rank, wealth, children, were
not given for their pleasure, to be appanages of self,
but to be used solely for God.

I need not point out here how this tranquil fear
implies love. It is physically impossible for beings
constituted as we are thus to throw ourselves into
the arms of one who does not love us intensely.
We could not abandon ourselves implicitly to a
cruel tyrant. It is because God is Infinite Good-
ness that our confidence in Him is so unbounded,
that unhesitatingly we place our entire trust in
one whose justice is so awful, whose claims are so
absolute. There is a most joyful feeling in perfect
repose upon the Infinite. We are raised above the
stifling prison feeling of earth, and breathe freely
when we have found an object on whom we can rest
without let or hindrance. The very absoluteness of
God is a relief to us. Our little nature can plunge into
that dread mmensity, secure of finding tself caught
and upborne on the wings of boundless love. For
this reason it is that our ideal Christian trusts God

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 423

against all appearances. In the midst of the per-
plexing ways of God's dealing with him, his faith
never fails. Others, whose fear is slavish, dread God
as though He might be expected at any moment to
circumvent them, and in the midst of actual trials
are ever querulous and complaining. Far different
is a Christian's loyal feeling. "Though He kill me,
yet will I trust Him." God's ways may be myste-
rious, but they are far more sure of His love than
they can be of anything else in the world, and their
love only becomes more pure and more intense in
the fiery furnace of trial.

1 need not say that such Christians are unworldly.
When such tremendous interests are at stake, earthly
things become immediately valueless. Rank, wealth,
honour, grow very pale before the full light of
God, Heaven, and Hell. Worldly pleasures weigh
nothing in comparison with Holy Communion or a
visit to the Blessed Sacrament. There is nothing in
them of the absorption, the terrible tenacity with
which the world is bent on its interests. Instead
of the frantic and cruel opposition which worldly
Catholics throw in the way of vocations, they think
it an honour to have a priest or a religious among
their children. They prefer a profession to a brilliant
marriage. This unworldliness throws a blessed
aureole of sanctity over all their earthly relations.
There is no self in the love over which God presides.
Children are loved intensely as precious gifts from
God, and, therefore, there is no weakness or over-
indulgence in their education. Husbands and wives
love each other far more intensely than can be when

424 THE LIFE OF

God is absent, yet their love is without idolatry.
Indifference is certainly by no means a virtue in
married Christians, because their love for each other
is the result of a sacrament, and the more perfect
they grow, the greater is their love. No fear of
loving each other too well, as long as God is loved
more than all.

After all, the basis of the character is love,
inseparable indeed from holy fear, yet still intense
love for God, flowing out without sentiment, without
profession, in a thousand ways spontaneously upon
all that God loves. This is the proper legitimate
effect of the Holy Communion — its sacramental
grace. The Heart of Jesus comes close to the human
heart, and nfuses into it all its loves.

First, it brings with it a strange love of solitude.
Jesus loved the lonely mountain and the desert, and
a desire for solitary prayer is generally the result
of frequent communion. I by no means forget the
married life of St Jane Frances de Chantal, and the
remark of the servants, that as soon as she quitted
her old director for St Francis of Sales, her devo-
tions were so managed as to incommode no one. A
married woman and a mother cannot live like a
Carmelite; nevertheless, after all, God must have
His hours; there must be time for mental prayer;
the Blessed Sacrament must be adored and
visited.

A love of lonely prayer is a very useful effect of
frequent communion, as well as an index of fitness
for it. Mystical tendencies are far more common in
the Christian heart than is supposed. I am not

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 425

speaking of supernatural prayer ; but there is many
a step between the very lowest kind of prayer of
quiet and common meditation. Many a soul has
been stunted and thwarted in spiritual growth from
a want of encouragement in prayer. It is but too
often taken for granted that those who are living
in the world are unfit for anything but vocal prayer,
or for anything above the driest meditation. Let
the free heart pour itself out before God. Tell Him
of all your sorrows and your wants, and especially
how much you long to love Him, and your deep
contrition for your sins. If you have but a short
time to spare, give it to Him without prelude or
method. " Of all ways of praying, that is the best
for us to which we are the most drawn, at which we
succeed best, and from which we derive most profit,"
says an old Jesuit writer. The heart which has really
turned to God will not long require to call upon the
imagination for compositions of place, or to draw
on the intellect for proofs of truths which are its
life. Be not afraid; you will find no lack of things to
say to God. Adoration, contrition, thanksgiving,
confidence, love, all these can alternate with peti-
tions for all wants, spiritual or even temporal.
We should, except in particular cases, be inclined to
suspect any desire for frequent communion, where
a desire for prayer is absent. It is for want of it
there is so much bustle, portentous activity, love of
publicity, and littleness in the religious world.
Nothing can make up for the habitual want of
mental prayer. The offering up of our actions to
God at the moment of doing them is not to be

426 THE LIFE OF

neglected, but it is not worth one half hour of con-
tinuous intercourse with Jesus in solitude.

I need not say that the result of this intercourse
with Our Lord is the unconscious adoption of all
sorts of supernatural principles and lines of conduct.
As the world has its maxims and its way of acting,
so also has Christianity. Many a man has been
all his life an indifferent Christian, because, though
he has the faith of the Church, he still clings to
national and heretical views, feelings, and modes of
action. On the contrary, those who grow in grace,
regularly, as though by a secret concert, adopt cer-
tain views which, intellectually, maybe called super-
natural principles, and which in reality are instinc-
tive feelings caught from the heart of Jesus.

First and foremost of these is the love of the poor.
I am not speaking of mere benevolence. The Chris-
tian feeling towards the poor is something hard to
describe. It is neither simple compassion, nor is
it a sense of duty. There are few who do not feel pity
akin to pain at hearing of suffering. There are many
who know that almsgiving is a duty. But I can
call a Christian's feeling for the poor by no other
name than love. The strange extravagances of
the saints, their love for the sores and wounds of
the poor, arise from a sort of ecstasy of love,
caught from the heart of Jesus. For this reason the
almsgiving of a real Christian is noble, generous,
lavish, and uncalculating. Though it is a real super-
natural prudence, yet the world would call it impro-
vident. God blesses the great houses where generous
almsgiving is hereditary. After all, here is the great

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 427

mark of unworldliness, the practical test of love for
the poor. At the same time that alms are given
regally, they are also bestowed with courtesy and
with a kind of reverence. True Christians have a
feeling for the poor, which can only be called
respect. They do not dragoon them, or legislate for
them, but consult their feelings, their habits, their
very caprices.

Need I say that another love of the Heart of
Jesus, the love for sinners, is fully shared by the
good Christian ? There is always something of an
apostle in him. How strange it is that the purest
souls are ever the most tender towards sinners ?
There is a profound Pharisaism in the worldly heart
when its virtue is only natural. How different is the
lesson learned from the wounded Heart of Jesus
by those who receive Him often in the Sacrament
of His Love ? He bids them try to save sinners at
any price. True, they are corrupt to the very heart's
core, ungrateful, deceitful, horrible to behold. But
in the mind of a Christian all the natural disgust and
repugnance is swallowed up in a profound pity for
their unutterable degradation, their state of des-
perate foulness. Are they not immortal souls ? Did
not Jesus die for them ? They are sinking down and
down in deeper depths of unspeakable abomination,
which can only end in hell. Hence, horror in a
Christian soul gives way before fright at their dread-
ful danger. Hence, when Jesus touches the heart, all
the feeling which bids the sinners stand off, which
thanks God that he is not as that Publican, dis-
appears, and gives place to pitying love. The purest

428 THE LIFE OF

and the most holy souls surround miserable sinners
with the most pathetic anxiety. The thought that
Jesus is so terribly dishonoured is to them intoler-
able ; and whenever they hear of a sinner, of what-
ever kind, they cannot rest till by prayer, or alms,
or personal exertion, they have compassed his con-
version, and thus repaired the honour of Our Lord
and saved his soul. It is an epoch in the life of a
Christian when this feeling dawns upon his soul. It
is a proof of increasing unionwithGoD.lt shows that
prayer is doing its work, that the Holy Communion
is transforming him to the image of Jesus. The
kindling of this apostolic flame can only be a spark
from the burning love of the Sacred Heart.

Another love caught from the Blessed Sacrament
is the love of the Church. However the world may
manage to complicate questions in its contests with
the Church, there is a sure instinct in real piety
which makes it see clearly which is the right side.
This is a tremendous touchstone of true religion.
What can I do for God ? you ask me. There is as
much, perhaps more, to be done for Him in this
generation as in the time when men assumed the
cross to rescue the Holy Sepulchre. Be loyal to the
Holy See in the day when its children are falling
from it. Rise above national prejudice and insular
feelings. Have the manliness to stand up for God's
cause when so many are caught by dreams of false
liberality. Let there be no miserable compromise
with heresy, no desire to stand well with the Pro-
testant world. I have said that there was a marked
difference between Christians such as I am describ-

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 429

ing and saints fit for canonization. Here, however,
the difference seems to melt away, and ordinary
Christians in times of danger rise up before us with
the stature and proportions of saints.There is a kind
of character to be traced among English Catholics
in ecclesiastical history, the precise parallel to
which, if I am not mistaken, can hardly be seen
elsewhere. There is a certain uprightness and reality
which, ordinarily speaking, without much outward
pretension to sanctity, in time of trial comes out in
unexpected grandeur, and especially distinguishes
itself by a valiant defence of those doctrines which
have a direct reference to the Church. Such was our
great St Thomas of Canterbury; such too was our
cardinal-martyr Fisher. I need hardly point to Sir
Thomas More, once threatening to be but a British
edition of Erasmus,* yet all at once vigorously cast-
ing off the prejudices of an English lawyer, and
exchanging his unstained ermine for a martyr's
robe. Look again at plain Mistress Clitheroe of
York, a wife and a mother, yet, suddenly, out of
an honest English housewife, starting up as a mar-
tyr, and crushed to death like a blessed flower which
gives out its hidden perfumes as it is trodden under
foot. Of the same stamp was Philip Howard, he by
whose side has just been laid at Arundel one never to
be forgotten, who resembled him in his noble single-
ness of purpose and beautiful simplicity. The days
of martyrdom perhaps are gone, but there is no

* This seems to refer to More's well-known friendship with
Erasmus, and should not be taken in any disparaging sense. " His
was a beautiful life from first to last." Lives of the English
Martyrs, Quarterly Series, vol. i, 124. — Ed.

430 THE LIFE OF

lack of work to be done for God. We can be the
representatives of all high and holy principles in the
midst of an unbelieving generation. Without pomp
or pretension, from the simple fact of our holding
Catholic principles and acting upon them, we can
protest against the miserable liberalism of many
who lend their honoured names to swell the cry
against the Church of God. We will not, under pre-
tence of fearing to scandalize Protestants, shrink
from putting forward doctrines which peculiarly
shock them, such as, the exclusiveness of salvation
and the jurisdiction of the Church. The heart that
aspires heavenwards tramples all human respect
under foot, and fears not to assert principles which
shock the national prejudices, or the politics of the
day. Our love for Jesus will make us feel like a
wound any attack upon His Vicar, even in His
capacity of sovereign. God forbid that we should be
feeding on the sacraments of the Church, kneeling at
her altars, and enjoying her ineffable consolations,
and yet refuse to bear her opprobrium with her,
or be indifferent to the insults heaped upon her
head. Our instincts will ever teach us that we must
rally round St Peter's chair, for there alone can
we be sure of acting right amidst the confusion and
tumult of the day. He who loves Jesus cannot help
loving the shepherd whom Jesus has set to feed His
sheep in His absence. The love of Rome is a saintly
instinct, coming direct from the Sacred Heart of
Jesus.

There is a work then to be done for God on the
earth. The powers of evil are abroad; this is their

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 431

hour, let us take God's side boldly, uncompro-
misingly. But, above all, there is work to be done for
God in our own souls. We might be far better than
we are. Our heart is a battlefield as well as the
world. There are three powers there fighting for the
mastery, the spirit of evil, the human spirit, and
the Spirit of God. Watch your own thoughts and
the movements of your own soul ; you will find that
each one comes from one of these three sources —
God, the devil, or yourself. Now, the spiritual life
consists in the prevalence of the Holy Ghost over
His miserable rivals. Pride and haughtiness, sensi-
bility to slights and insults real or fancied, unkind-
ness and harsh judgements, want of considerate-
ness for servants and dependants, anger and hasti-
ness in giving reproofs, all these are perpetually ris-
ing up in our hearts, and are to be put down. Quick
emotions are ever agitating and unmanning us.
Here, then, is work enough for us to do. Say not;
We have tried so long that we are out of heart. Be-
cause efforts have failed, it does not follow that we
should not renew them. Let us fight on, without
expecting any result from ourselves, but only
through the might of Jesus. Here must be the work
of the Blessed Sacrament. Receive Jesus frequently
He will calm these troubled waves and give you
peace. The fire from His Sacred Heart, coming
so close to yours, will burn up these impurities, and
inflame it with heavenly love. His Blessed Spirit
will take possession of your body and soul, till you
will no longer think your own thoughts, or be at the
mercy of your own feelings, but see all things with

432 THE LIFE OF

His eyes, and feel with His Heart instead of your
own. He longs for this Himself; "with desire He
desires " to unite Himself to you in the Holy Com-
munion.

To us priests it belongs to satisfy this desire of
Jesus. To us He has entrusted this most blessed
power of distributing the Blessed Sacrament. God
and His Church leave it to us to estimate the
frequency with which each soul should receive
the Holy Communion. No rule is laid down, but it
is left absolutely* to each of us in the tribunal of
penance. This is a great responsibility. According
to the idea which each of us has in his mind, the
Bread of Life is distributed to the faithful. It is
the highest and most important part of direction.
The sanctity of each soul may be said to turn upon
it. Let us not act at random, but on principle.
Above all, let us lean to the side of frequency.
There are many souls who ought to communicate
frequently, and do not do so, because they have
wrong views upon this all-important subject. There
are thousands of souls who might communicate
weekly, and do not. There are many sinners who
could be reformed if they were encouraged to com-
municate more often. Let us hasten to satisfy this
thirst of the Heart of Jesus, and continually
preach frequent communion.

We end, as we began, with Thee, dear Lord. Oh
come, Lord Jesus. Here is work for the Sacrament
of Thy love. Our hearts are weary and heavy laden,

* The role of the Confessor has been altered by the Decree. See
p. xiii.

THE FREQUENT COMMUNICANT 433

0 come and refresh them ! We have ceased to have
any hope in ourselves; but, notwithstanding all sins
and imperfections, one thing burns within us still
undiminished, a thirst for the Blessed Sacrament.

" As the hart panteth after the fountains of
waters, so my soul panteth after Thee, O God. My
soul thirsteth after the strong living God ; when shall

1 come and appear before the face of God ? My
tears have been my meat day and night, whilst it
is said to me daily, Where is thy God ? These things
I remembered, and poured out my soul in me : for I
shall go ever into the place of the wonderful taber-
nacle, even to the house of God. Why art thou sad,
O my soul, and why dost thou trouble me ? Hope
in God, for I will yet praise Him, the salvation of my
countenance and my God."

ff

APPENDIX

Note A, p. 32. — On the Scholastic Idea of
Space.
The views on the subject of space held by St Thomas
can only be gathered from different parts of his
writings, and I will endeavour to collect a sufficient
number of passages to justify what I have said con-
cerning them.

Space is co-extensive with creation. Summa 1,
qu. 46, art. 1, ad. 4, and 8.

Properly speaking, space has reference to bodies.
The definition of " locus " is " terminus corporis
continents. " Opusc. 52.

Nevertheless, spiritual substances are also sub-
ject to space, but in a different way from bodies, —
i, qu. 8, art. 2, ad. 1, where St Thomas modifies the
old axiom, " Incorporalia non sunt in loco."

Angels are in a manner in space. Summa 1, qu. 52,
art. 1, 2, 3.

Angels were created in the empyrean heaven.
Qu. 61, art. 4.

Our Lord's Body is not in the Blessed Sacrament
sicut in loco. 3 qu. 76, art. 5.

Nevertheless it is by accident subject to the laws
of space, not in itself, but as connected with the
species. Art. 6.

The following passage from a learned German
work on St Thomas will be found to be a good
resume of his views on space ;

" Our power of making space an object of
thought has its origin in the perception that the

434

APPENDIX 435

same place is occupied successively by different
bodies. Thus the movement of bodies and their
change of place lead us to the concept of space.
Although, however, it is not the same with bodies,
yet its existence depends on that of bodies. It is the
circumference of the corporeal things which it con-
tains. Above all, there is no such thing as a vacuum,
either within or without the corporeal world. Just
as little is there infinite space. There is no space
outside the corporeal world ; and that world is neces-
sarily finite and circumscribed. In its very idea each
body is limited, and an infinite number of such
bodies is inconceivable, since there is no such thing
as infinite multitude. . . . Immaterial substances, as
such, are not contained by space, rather they con-
tain the place in which they are, and where they
operate; in this way the soul contains the body, the
angels contain the corporeal thing on which they
work, and God contains all things. Souls and angels
are limited by their presence and operation to a
determinate place; God, however, is simply above
all space. As the soul is in its wholeness in each part
of the body, so God also is wholly in each part of the
universe; not, however, in the same way as the soul.
The soul is in all parts of the body as its essence;
but God is in all parts of the universe as the cause
of their being. The soul is bound to the place in the
body, because it is the essence of the body. The
angel cannot be in many places at once, but, like
the soul, can only be in one determinate place,
though it is there by its operation, not by its
essence. If, therefore, an angel wishes to go from one

ff2

436 THE HOLY COMMUNION

place to another, he must move, though he is not
obliged to move through all the intermediate
space. Werner, " Der Heilige Thomas von Aquino."
Band. 2, p. 265.

It is evident from this passage how very different
are the points of view from which the Schoolmen
and modern writers severally regarded space. It
may be truly said that the Schoolmen held at once
the reality of place and the non-reality of space.
The truth of this observation will be made more
evident from a comparison of the following passages
of De Lugo. De Sacr. Euch. Disp. v, sect. 4.
" Nomine loci videtur intelligi superficies realis
corporalis circumdantis, non tamen secundum se
solum, sed prout immobilis, hoc, est prout affixa
tali spatio imaginario." A little further on, " spa-
tium reale," is used as the equivalent of " locus ";
while sect. 5, num. 123, he seems to say that spatium
as distinguished from locus " non est aliquid reale."

Note B, p. 35. — On Certain Scholastic Terms.

In order to make the doctrine of St Thomas intel-
ligible to my readers, I have been obliged to use
terms which, as far as I know, are not used by him
or the earlier Schoolmen. It may be useful for stu-
dents of theology to give a short account of their
views, and to explain their phraseology.

I begin by saying that all theologians universally
assert most strongly that the Body of Our Lord in
the Blessed Sacrament is unextended. I shall give
some quotations from very various schools to make
this clear. Billuart, after saying that the quantity of

APPENDIX 437

Our Lord's Body is all in the Host, adds : Quantitas
autem Christi non est extensa ad locum nee illi
commensurata. Diss. 4, art. 2, In. San Euch.

De Lugo. — In Sac. Euch. Diss. 5, sect. 1, Licet
Christus Dominus in ccelo habet extensionem
quantitativam, in Eucharistia tamen habet alium
modum essendi et ideo collocatur simul in pluribus
altaribus quod adversus hcereticos probatur.

Frassen,Philosophia Academica(a Scotist writer) —
Negari non potest absque ingenti temeritate Corpus
Christi in Eucharistia habere veram quantitatem
continuam et permanentem, alias non diceretur cor-
pus humanum et organicum. Certum tamen est illam
quantitatem ibi esse sine actuali extensione locali,
nam ut fide constat Christi Domini Corpus est
totum in toto loco Hostiae consecratae et totum in
qualibet ejus minima parte.

These writers evidently consider the non-exten-
sion of Our Lord's Body to be theologically certain
and all but of faith.

Let us now see how St Thomas expresses the same
truth. It is evident that he means that Our Lord's
Body is non-extended, when he says that it is in the
Blessed Sacrament per modum substantias. This is
plain from the fact that the above-mentioned writers
mean by the extension of a body its having parts
locally outside one another. Now this is precisely
what St Thomas denies of Our Lord's Body when
he says that it is " modo substantivo," v. for in-
stance, iii, qu. 76, art. 4 and 5. He there says it is
" totum in toto, et totum in qualibet parte," and he
then denies that it is in itself under the common

438 THE HOLY COMMUNION

laws of locality, though in each Host it is fixed to
the place formerly occupied by the bread, or as he
expresses it, still filled with the quantity of the
species. He founds this view upon his idea of sub-
stance. According to his view, substance stripped of
quantity is independent of place, indivisible, the
object of mind alone. He even speaks of it almost
as if it were immaterial. Upon this substance,
dividing it into parts, organizing it and giving it a
local habitation, comes the category of quantity,
never without a miracle separated from it, yet
separable in idea, and, therefore, capable of separa-
tion by the power of God.

This conception of the functions and office of
quantity will explain other difficulties in the phrase-
ology of Saint Thomas. In the place which I have
quoted above, he says that the whole quantity of
Our Lord's Body is in the Blessed Sacrament. He
means that it is there, undiminished, with all its
parts, and above all, it is there, with all its organi-
zation. He adds, however, that it is not there modo
quantitativo, " after the usual manner of quantity."
In other words, it is not, properly speaking, there
locally, for, according to the ordinary laws of local-
ity, it could be nowhere else, whilst in the Blessed
Sacrament, though localized through the accidents
in each Host, it is also in thousands of Hosts besides.
And if it be asked, how, if quantity is there, is it
possible that extension, which is its effect, should
be absent, he answers, that extens on is but the
secondary effect of quantity, and can, therefore, be
impeded by the power of God as long as its

APPENDIX 439

primary result — viz., the division into parts, is pre-
served.

In the latter Schoolmen, when the use of the
word " extensio " became common, this would be
otherwise expressed. With them, the word has a
much wider signification than in modern philosophy.
With us extension is exclusively local, and is
equivalent to empiric space. They, however, divided
" extensio " into two kinds; besides " extensio in
ordine ad locum" (which is modern extension), they
also say that there is in a body " extensio in ordine ad
se," which is St Thomas's "quantitas," and would by
us be called organization: vide Frassen ubi sup. In
other words, they lay down the doctrine which I
have tried to describe in my fourth chapter, that
organization can subsist without extension.

It only remains for me to quote passages from
an accredited commentator on St Thomas to sup-
port my view of his meaning. John of St Thomas,
a Dominican, has these words on the formal idea
of quantity :

44 Formalis ratio quantitatis non potest con-
sistere primario et per se in actuale repletione loci
aut quacumque actuali extensione in ordine ad
locum, constat enim ex mysteriis fidei sine istis
affectionibus quantitatem inveniri ; est enim Corpus
Christi in Eucharistia cum sua quantitate, sicut et
cum reliquis accidentibus ut probat St Thomas,
iii, qu. 76, 4. Et tamen ibi non est modo divisibili
nee modo mensurabili in ordine ad locum divisibi-
liter." — Cursus Philosophicus, sect. 16, art. 1.

On substance, he says: 44 Sublata quantitate sub-

440 THE HOLY COMMUNION

stantia careret omnibus punctis et consequenter
omni unitivo partium per modum extensionis quia
ut bene advertit, D. Thomas in 9, dist. 30, qu. 1:
substantia sine quantitate non est indivisibilis per
reductionem partium ad punctum sed per carentiam
omnis divisibilitatis. Unde non esset in ilia sub-
stantia omnis motus sicut nee locus physicus sed
solum esset in universo tanquam pars illius, non ut
locatum in loco, omnes enim istae imaginationes
tollendse sunt, quia sequuntur quantitatem ut loca-
tam. Quare ilia substantia non est distans nee
alicubi positive, sed locum habet existentium sine
loco, sicut res extra mundum et angelus non
operans." He adds afterwards the very strong state-
ment: " Nee tamen sequitur quod ilia entitas red-
d tur spiritualis quia manet cum capacitate quan-
titatis quam non habet spiritus; habet tamen
modum quendam spiritualitatis, sicut Corpus Christi
in Sacramento." It is impossible to read such pas-
sages without being struck with the resemblance
of the views of St Thomas in substance to those of
such modern philosophers as consider substance to
be unextended force. Their method is perfectly
different. Their fundamental conception of matter
is different. So far from looking upon matter as a
substance with a collection of extraneous accidents
adhering to it, modern writers now look upon it as
the permanent cause out of which the qualities and
phenomena proceed. Nevertheless, notwithstanding
all these differences, there is a great resemblance
in the fundamental idea of the ultimate non-
extension of matter. In comparing scholastic to

APPENDIX 441

modern philosophy our first impulse is to say that
they are perfectly different. A more intimate ac-
quaintance with them leads to the conclusion that
they are, after all, not so dissimilar. Modern philo-
sophy, as far as it is true, is rather a formula imper-
fectly expressing a truth which we only partially
see; and scholastic philosophy is another formula
and another method, sometimes less clear and less
convenient than the modern, and yet perfectly
capable of expressing truth. If we only choose to
master its phraseology, and to throw ourselves into
its modes of thought, we shall have a higher opinion
of it, the more we study it. We shall be the more
convinced that, in some shape or other, it treats of
all the questions of our own day, though they are
often less neatly stated by the Schoolmen, and that
its fundamental ideas are such as never have passed
away, and never can be destroyed. Abvoe all, we
shall see that the very terms which are consecrated
by theology, such as substance, person, accident,
have still a perfectly intelligible meaning, even to
men of this generation, if only they honestly apply
their minds to master them.

Note C, p. 40. — On the Philosophy
of St Thomas.
In order to justify what is here said of the
scholastic axiom, " Nihil est in intellectu quod non
fuerit prius in sensu," it will be necessary to give
a brief account of its bearings on the philosophy of
the Schoolmen, and of the use which they made of
it ; and here, as elsewhere, I will take St Thomas as

442 THE HOLY COMMUNION

their representative, without forgetting in the least
that there were other schools of philosophy in the
Middle Ages, authorized by the Church as well as
the Dominican.

First, how comes it that St Thomas was led to
lay so much stress on the axiom in question ? We
must remember the saint's historical position.
When we wonder at the stupendous edifice of the
Summa, and gaze at the splendid whole, we must
not forget that, like all other great books, it had
as it were a private history. It was written for a
particular purpose, and was the result of an anxious
combat with particular opinions. The doctrines of
Averrhoes had even infected the Christian schools.
The peculiar heresy' opposed by St Thomas was a
definite Pantheism, which taught that all men had
but one intellect, and which did not shrink from
following out this doctrine into its legitimate con-
clusion, the denial of personality and of the moral
responsibility of the individual. This is the key to
much which would otherwise be inexplicable in St
Thomas. The great question which occupies him is
the principle of individuation. Why is each human
soul one, and what constitutes its individuality is
the central question of his system. Hence his insist-
ing on the doctrine, that the soul is the form of the
body. Hence his view, that the matter individuates
the form. His opponents did not deny that bodies
were separate and distinct. If, then, the saint
argues, each man has a separate body, it also
follows from these principles that he has a separate
soul. The souls which are the forms of these several

APPENDIX 443

bodies must also be distinct individuals. Hence also
the prominent place given by St Thomas to all
doctrines which illustrate the intimate union be-
tween body and soul. Hence his anxiety to show
how the action of the senses is a condition to the
operations of the human intellect.

Secondly, another reason why St Thomas in-
sisted so much on the action of the senses in the
operations of the intellect was in order to secure
the objectiveness of human knowledge. Since his
doctrine of conceptualism consists in holding that
genera and species are concepts, that is, represen-
tations formed by the intellect, it was necessary to
prove that they were at least in some sense simili-
tudes of the outer world, in order to secure our
knowing anything whatsoever of objects outside
our minds. Truth, according to his definition, is the
conformity of the intellect to its objects; and this
is effected by the intellect forming to itself a simili-
tude of the thing which it contemplates. In order,
however, to enable the mind to frame this resem-
blance, the likeness of the thing must previously
have been impressed on the sense. Evidently the
accuracy of the likeness depends upon the fidelity
of this first impression, and for this reason the sense
is considered by him to be a passive faculty, deter-
mined by the sensible object.* The eye perceives
colour, because the image of the colour, which
colour exists only in the object, is impressed upon
it; and if the intellect is to frame to itself an
accurate idea of the colour, it must have received

* Summa, i, 71, 3, ad. 1 ; i, 85, 2, ad. 2.

444 THE HOLY COMMUNION

the image faithfully from the sense and from the
phantasia. Hence the anxiety of St Thomas to
connect the intellect as closely as possible with the
faithful copy, impressed by the object on the sense.
It is in order to obtain a firm standpoint for the
ideas of the mind, which would otherwise be arbi-
trary fictions. He was perfectly aware that the mind
colours the object after its own fashion, and that
all that is the object of the cognition of a being can
only be conceived according to the nature of the
intellect of that being.* He knew that the similitude
in the immaterial intellect cannot be the image of
the matter of the object, but only of its form; it was
the more necessary, therefore, that, at least, the
sensible image should be accurate, in order that the
same intellect should be able to correct its idea
according to the phantasm which it derives from
sense.

I do not think, therefore, that it can be denied
that St Thomas, for' these reasons, assigned to the
senses a greater part in the work of the intellect
than many other Catholic philosophers, that he
laid a greater stress on the necessity of a perpetual
recourse to the phantasma, even when the idea was
framed, and that intuition plays a less part in the
operations of the mind in his system than, for
instance, in that of St Bonaventure.

Is this, however, the whole of St Thomas's doc-
trine? Is he simply a medieval Locke? Does he
hold that we have no knowledge of any truth except
through data derived from the senses? Conse-

* Summa, i. 85, ad. I.

APPENDIX 445

quently that we have no immediate knowledge, no
intuition of anything but the objects of sense?
Does he refer all our knowledge to experience, and
consequently shut out the possibility of necessary
truth ? I think it can clearly be made out that St
Thomas held that the human mind has an intuitive
faculty, that it possesses intuitions in the wider
sense of the term, that is, native convictions of
truths not derived from abstraction, nor obtained
by inference, " original perceptions looking im-
mediately upon the object or truth."*

The Schoolmen were perfectly aware of the ten-
dency to idealism inherent in the doctrine of repre-
sentative ideas. The question often presented itself
to St Thomas, whether the intellect was not in
error, and consequently whether the views which
it presents to us may not be altogether false. Scotus
says still more explicitly, " quomodo habetur certi-
tudo eorum quae subsunt actibus sensuum puta
quod aliquid extra re vera est album quale videtur
et calidum, prout sentitur." Scotus ap. Monte-
fortino, Summa, torn, ii, p. 1, qu. 84. Hence arose
Scotus's realistic reaction against St Thomas,
whilst in the next century Ockham'sf counter-
action actually drew from St Thomas's doctrine
the conclusion that truth is not the conformity of
the mind to an object, but the logical coherence of
ideas with a mere arbitrary relation to the object.
Without, however, pursuing further the history of

* M'Cosh, " Intuitions of the Mind," p. 26.

t What I have said in the text on the realism of the Nominalists
only applies to the early school, not to that of Durandus or Ock-
ham.

446 THE HOLY COMMUNION

the controversy, let us see what, according to St
Thomas, is our warrant for believing that the idea
which our mind abstracts from the objects of sense
as conveyed by the phantasma really represents
those objects. He answers that, in the process of
abstracting the idea from the species impressa or
phantasma, the mind is guided by certain intui-
tions, as they would now be called. In several
places of his works he says that the intellectus agens
possesses not from experience, nor from reasoning,
but in its original constitution, certain principles
by which it recognizes the form wrapped up in
phantasmata. For instance, in his treatise De
Mente, he says, " Ipsa anima in se simultudines
rerum format, in quantum per lumen intellectus
agentis efficiuntur formse a sensibilibus abstracts
intelligibiles actu ut in intellectu recipi possint. Et
sic etiam in lumine intellectus agentis nobis quo-
dammodo omnis scientia originaliter indita, medi-
antibus universalibus conceptionibus quae statim
lumine intellectus agentis cognoscuntur per quas
sicut per universalia principia judicamus de aliis
et ea praecognoscimus in ipsis." De Mente. In the
same place he speaks of " Principia quorum cognitio
est nobis innata." The same truth is most strikingly
expressed in various passages of the Summa, where
this intelligence of first principles is said to be non-
inferential and immediate — i, qu. 58, art. 3; qu. 64,
art. 2, where the human intellect is in that respect
paralleled with that of the angels. Vide also Summa,
la 2ae, qu. 8, art. 1. Nay, in a most remarkable
passage, la 2ae, qu. 180, art. 6, ad. 2, the very word

APPENDIX 447

intuition is used of the knowledge of first principles
and it is compared to mystical contemplation. Vide
also i, qu. 79, 12, where it is said that " the un-
changeable laws of morals are known by us without
reasoning through " principia nobis naturaliter
indita," for which we have a special habit, called
synderesis. It is evident that these are true intui-
tions and not simply cases in which, by analysis,
we see immediately a predicate involved in a
subject.

So palpable is it that what St Thomas calls
M intellectus " is a storehouse of a priori principles
existing in the mind prior to experience, that a
plausible parallel has more than once been drawn
between the doctrine of St Thomas and that of
Kant.* In both there is the union of matter
and form in the concept. Kant's " Verstand " may
easily be compared to the " intellectus agens," and
the saint's " principia naturaliter indita " resemble
the a priori concepts and principles of the pure
understanding. There are, however, very great
differences.

1. In Kant the form of our knowledge is entirely
furnished by the mind. In St Thomas the form is
the similitude of the form of the object, and ab-
stracted from the phantasmata. Nor is there any
inconsistency in this, for it must be remembered
that with the Schoolmen the form of the object is
immaterial — hi, qu. 75, 6.

2. In Kant the cognition is a modification of the
mind. In St Thomas the species intelligibilis, or

* Vide Balmes, ap. Werner, 3, 638.

448 THE HOLY COMMUNION

rather the verbum mentis, which expresses it, is a
tertium quid between the mind and the object, a
similitude of the object, framed by the mind to
represent the object, and emanating from the in-
tellect.

3. In St Thomas the action of God on the soul is
never forgotten. Even in the natural order our souls
are perpetually under the influence of God's opera-
tion, and those intuitions come directly from Him.
Though their truth is self-evident, and though, if I
may use the expression, they are self-luminous, yet,
as in material light we can inquire into the cause of
its luminousness, so with respect to those native
convictions of the mind, we may inquire whence
they are derived; and, according to St Thomas,
these illuminations which light up the soul come
from God. " Prima principia quorum cognitio est
nobis innata sunt quaedam similitudines veritatis
seternse, unde secundum quod per eas de aliis judi-
camus, dicimur judicare de rebus per rationes
immutabiles vel veritatem increatam." It is from
God and from God alone that they derive their
immutableness and eternity, or as we should now
say, their necessity. I might say much more on this
subject. I might go on to point out the bearing of
St Thomas's doctrine on the transcendental con-
ception of God (" Die Platonische transcendenz
der Dominicanschulen," as Werner calls it), or of
his views on the Divine ideas. I have, however,
said enough to show what injustice is done to this
great saint, by looking exclusively to one part of
his doctrine. With all the defects in his psychology,

APPENDIX 449

notwithstanding the superiority of St Bonaven-
ture's proofs of the existence of God, I do not
believe that modern philosophy will arrive at a
stable foundation till it restores the dependence
of the intellect on God, as laid down by the great
mind of St Thomas.

Note D, p. 64. — On Intuition and
Immediate Knowledge.
I need hardly say that I use the word intuition
in the modern and not in the scholastic sense. I am
quite aware that the Schoolmen seem to restrict it
to an immediate knowledge of an object, resulting
from its presence. Thus, the beatific vision is called
" visio intuitiva," because it is the vision of God
in Himself immediately present to the soul in
heaven. The word is also applied to our perceptions
of sensible objects. Thus, Durandus defines " cog-
nitio intuitiva " to be " ilia quae immediate tendit
ad rem sibi praesentem objective, secundum ejus
actualem existentiam: sicut cum video colorem
existentem in pariete, vel rosam quam in manu
teneo. Abstractiva dicitur omnis cognitio quae
habetur de re, non sic realiter praesente in ratione
objecti immediate cogniti." As far as I am aware,
it is only sometimes in St Thomas, as quoted above,
and in writers of the mystical school, that the word
is used in a wider sense, like that in which it is now
used, and applied to all immediate knowledge,
whether resulting from the presence of the object
or not, as, for instance, the knowledge of first prin-
ciples. Thus, Thomas of Jesus says: " Vis intellec-

GG

450 THE HOLY COMMUNION

tiva in quantum est discursiva, dicitur ratio: in
quantum est simplici apprehensione intuitiva,
dicitur intellectiva." He goes on to give instances
of this intuitive faculty in remarkable words. Secun-
dum D. Thomam., i, qu. 79, 12, " In ratione specu-
lativa est quidam habitus animae concreatus quo
principia prima in speculabilibus naturaliter ter-
minis intellectis sine discursu mox ei innotescerent,
ex quibus principiis procedit ratio ad notitiam
conclusionum. Talia principia sunt hsec et similia:
Tota majus est sua parte: in ratione vero practica
alius est habitus concreatus animae, quo prima
principia in operabilibus cognoscit, ut quod Deo
sit obediendum, bonum malo praeferendum et
similia. Et hie habitus secundum D. Thomam
vocatur synderesis." De Cont. div. lib. 2, c. 2.

Two things seem equally evident from these
passages: one, that the word intuition or kindred
words are very rarely used by the Schoolmen in
the modern sense; the other, that the existence of
intuitive or non-inferential ideas is inculcated by
them. To prevent mistakes, the following observa-
tions should be added.

1. The doctrine that the human mind possesses
an intuition of the truth of the existence of God is
widely different from the ontologistical theory.
Ontologism means the denial of all ideas inter-
mediate between God and the soul. Intuition, on
the contrary, implies a faculty from which the
mind without deductive reasoning elicits ideas,
which carry with them their own evidence.

2. I think it may be allowed that St Thomas

APPENDIX 451

nowhere asserts and certainly seems to deny that
the knowledge of the existence of God is intuitive
even in the modern sense.

3. I have not suppressed what I have said in
former editions about the intuitive knowledge of
God, because the view is, as far as I know, a lawful
one. It seems to be the theory that " Deum existere
est propositio per se nota quoad nos," only clothed
in modern language. Now it must not be forgotten
that St Anselm and Albertus Magnus are quoted
as holding this view. Again, St Bonaventure
quotes St Anselm with approbation, and himself
says: " Tanta est Veritas divini esse quod cum
assensu non potest cogitari non esse, nisi propter
ignorantiam cogitantis, qui ignorat quid est quod
per nomen Dei dicitur." — Liber i, Dist. 8; Part I,
qu. 2. Farther, even Viva, after arguing against the
view in one sense, affirms the following proposition :
" Quamvis non sit per se notum quoad nos Deum
existere sub conceptu Dei, seu cumuli omnium
perfectionum, est tamen per se notum Deum
existere sub conceptu aliquo convertibili cum Deo,
puta Supremi Legislatoris, Numinis colendi," etc.
De Deo, Part I, Disp. i, art. 1, 6. Accordingly,
the passage respecting the intuition of the exis-
tence of God was allowed to stand by the careful
examiner of my book, whom I have mentioned in
the Preface. The following passages seem also to
affirm the tenableness of the view.

Even the Thomist school allows that God is
immediately, though confusedly, known under the
notion of the ultimate end of our being, or else of

gg2

452 THE HOLY COMMUNION

the highest good. " Non est dubium de Deo con-
fuse accepto quia unusquisque ilium sic immediate
cognoscit cum suum appetat ultimum finem."
Florez. Theologia Scholastieon, torn, i, 51.

I will add but two quotations more from modern
writers, one of which contains references to very
ancient authorities: " In this sense Jacobi is right
when he calls the idea of God inborn and imme-
diately certain. Vide Saint Bonaventure, Itiner.
Ment. c. 1, sqq., and in 1 Dist. qu. 1. The holy
Fathers call man OeoSiSciktoq, on account of this
immanent consciousness of God. Thomassin. Dogm.
Theol. de Deo, 1. 1, c. 3. Thus it is said in the Apos-
tolical Constitution, viii, 12: "Thou hast given to
man an inborn law (vo/nov e/uKpvrov), so that he
might have as a familiar possession, and in himself,
the seeds of the knowledge of God (owwg o'lkoOzv Kal
nap eavrov tyoi Ta airep/naTa Trig dtoyvwalaq)" Het-
tinger, Der Beweis des Christenthums.

Again, Greith, the present Bishop of St Gall,
says, in his Handbuch der Philosophic, p. 24, " The
existence of God is native to the human spirit, in
the sense that it is given at once and immediately
with the faculty of reason."

4. Nevertheless, the whole question of our intui-
tional faculties, and of the distinction between
what the Germans call Idee and Begriff, is one
which seems never to have been analysed, a task
which I have by no means sufficient confidence in
myself to attempt.

APPENDIX 453

Note E, p. 82. — Authorities on the Non-
Extension of Matter.

I only claim for Kant an agreement with Leibnitz
on the subject of the non-extension of matter. I am
not acquainted with this portion of Kant's writings,
and I am obliged to take his views secondhand
from a trustworthy writer, who states them as
follows :

" Kant a imagine une hypothese, qui sans avoir
les avantages de celle de Boscovich, a le meme in-
convenient celui de conduire logiquement a la nega-
tion de l'^tendue reelle. Kant suppose qu'il n'y a
dans l'espace aucun lien absolument plein, aucun
lien absolument vide : que les forces motrices, a
elles seules, constituent les corps; que l'etendue
n'est qu'un phenomene du mouvement, savoir, une
expansion de forces motrices dans l'espace; qu'a
la force expansive est opposee la force attractive
en force de concentration; que la reaction £tant
egale a Taction, plus une force expansive est con-
centree, plus elle tend a s'epandre, et qu'elle n'en
peut etre empechee que par la force attractive d'une
part, d'autre part les autres forces expansives qui
lui font obstacle exterieurement ; que la compres-
sibilite est indefinie ; que l'impenetrabilite se reduit
a l'impossibilite d'une compression infiniment in-
tense et par consequent de toute la matiere, en un
point mathematique, et que ce serait cette con-
centration impossible qui seule pourrait produire
en ce point le plein absolu." — Martin, " Philosophic
spiritualiste de la nature," torn, i, 363.

To show how widely spread are such views, I

454 THE HOLY COMMUNION

subjoin a passage from Cousin's " Fragments
Philosophiques," torn, i, p. 73. " Ne pourrait on
reduire tous les modes reguliers d'action de la
nature a deux modes qui dans leurs rapports avec
Taction spontanee et r6flechie du moi et delaraison,
manifesteraient une harmonie plus intime encore
que celle que nous venons d'indiquer entre le monde
int£rieur et le monde exterieur? On entrevoit que
je veux parler ici de l'expansion et de la concentra-
tion; mais tant que les travaux methodiques n'au-
ront pas converti ces conjectures en certitudes,
j'espere et me tais; je me contente de remarquer
que deja les considerations philosophiques qui
reduisent la notion du monde exterieur a celle de
la force ont fait grande route et gouvernent a son
insu la physique moderne. Quel physicien depuis
Euler, cherche autre chose dans la nature que des
forces et de lois? qui parle aujourd'hui d'atomes?
et m£me les molecules, renouvelees, des atomes,
qui les donne pour autre chose, qu'une hypothese ?
Si le fait est incontestable, si la physique moderne
ne s'occupe que de forces et de lois, j'en conclus
rigoureusement que la physique, qu'elle le sache ou
qu'elle l'ignore, n'est pas materialiste, et qu'elle
s'est faite spiritualist e le jour ou elle a rejete tout
autre methode que l'observation ou l'induction,
lesquelles ne peuvent conduire qu'a des forces et a
des lois, or qu'y a-t-il de materiel dans les forces et
dans les lois ? "

It may be useful to add a passage from a very
different writer, which bears on the whole question,
though not exactly on the subject of this note.

APPENDIX 455

" There is not the slightest reason for believing that
what we call the sensible qualities of the object
are a type of anything inherent in itself, or bear an
affinity to its own nature. A cause does not, as such,
resemble its effects ; an east wind, is not like the feel-
ing of cold, nor heat like the steam of boiling water ;
why, then, should matter resemble our sensations ?
Why should the inmost nature of fire or water
resemble the impressions made by these objects on
our senses? And if not on the principle of resem-
blance, on what other principle can the manner in
which objects affect us through our senses afford
us any insight into the inherent nature of those
objects ? It may, therefore, be laid down as a truth,
both obvious in itself and admitted by all whom it
is at present necessary to take into consideration,
that of the outward world we know and can know
nothing, except the sensations which we experience
from it." " The attempt, indeed, has been made by
Reid and others to establish that, although some
of the properties we ascribe to objects exist only in
our sensations, others exist in the things them-
selves ; and they ask from what sensations our notions
of extension and figure have been derived? The
gauntlet thrown down by Reid was taken up by
Brown, who, applying greater powers of analysis
than had previously been applied to the notions of
extension and figure, showed clearly what are the
sensations from which those notions are derived,
viz. : sensations of touch, combined with sensations
of a class previously too little adverted to by meta-
physicians, those which have their seat in our mus-

456 THE HOLY COMMUNION

cular frame. On this subject also, M. Cousin may be
quoted in favour of the essential subjectivity of our
conceptions of the primary qualities of matter, as
extension, solidity," etc. — Mill's " System of
Logic," vol. 1, p. 66.

The juxtaposition of these passages will suffice
to show by what various writers and on what
various grounds the essential extension of matter
is denied.

Note F, p. 146. — On the Use of the Word
" Phenomena."

It is necessary here to warn the reader that by
phenomena I do not mean mere subjective appear-
ances, that is, affections of our organs, caused im-
mediately by God, without external cause. This
view has been held by some theologians, especially
by Cartesians, and has never been declared contrary
to the faith. The vast majority of theologians,
however, are strongly against it; and the Sacred
Congregation, in 1649, condemned the following
proposition: "Accidentia Eucharistica non sunt
accidentia realia, sed mera3 illusiones, et prsestigia
oculorum." It seems then that, according to theo-
logians, it is necessary to hold that the species are
real. In the Holy Eucharist, then, it appears that
there are certain qualities remaining after the con-
version of the substance of bread, over and above
the affections caused by them on our senses. As
has been observed, it is very difficult to reconcile
this with the Cartesian view, that material objects
are simply extensions, and that what are called

APPENDIX 457

qualities are simply effects mechanically caused on
our senses by extension. If the extended, object is
taken away, it is not easy to see, on this view,
what remains but the affection of the organism,
nor how it can be caused, except by the immediate
power of God. There is, however, no difficulty on
the hypothesis mentioned in the text, that material
bodies consist of a collection of unextended forces.
Some of these forces are permanent, others are
variable, for while the substance remains, the same
phenomena are perpetually varying. Each body,
therefore, may be considered to be a collection of
changeable forces, resulting from the activity of a
great substantial force. It is evident that the shift-
ing forces may be looked upon as qualities emana-
ting and radiating from a central force, which is
the permanent source of them all, and which is the
substance. It is also clearly conceivable that these
forces should remain after the central force or sub-
stance is gone. On the other hand, Leibnitz found
considerable difficulty in his way when he attemp-
ted to adjust this portion of theology to his views,
because body, according to him, is a collection of
monads; that is, of forces utterly independent of
each other, and in no way whatsoever standing in
the relation of cause and effect. It is, therefore, very
hard to see why any of these forces are at all more
substantial than others. Vide his letters to P. des
Bosses, especially letter 21 ; and also Dr Russell's
valuable notes to the " Sy sterna Theologicum." I
need not say that I am in no way committed to
Leibnitz's doctrine of monads.

458 THE HOLY COMMUNION

Note G, p. 241. — On the Frequency of
Communion in the Middle Ages.
I have spoken in the text of the general state of
things in the Church; it is very possible, however,
that in isolated places the custom of more frequent
communion was kept up. In a passage to which I
have referred, in Tauler's fourth sermon on Corpus
Christi, he seems to say that such was the case at
Cologne. " Es ist zu Coin eine gute gewohnheit,
das man gerne das heilige sacrament empfangt."
This falls in curiously with a passage of Albertus
Magnus, de Euch., dist. vi, tract 2, c. 3. " De his
autem qui mulieres omni die communicant, videtur
mihi quod acriter reprehendendi sunt; quia nimio
usu vilescere faciunt sacramentum vel potius ex
levitate mulierum putatur esse desiderium quam ex
devotione causatum." From the severity, however,
with which the writer speaks, I cannot help con-
sidering that the practice was connected with the
vast amount of spiritual illusion which was fer-
menting on the banks of the Rhine; and the tone
of Tauler's sermons falls in with this view. There
is also a passage in James of Vitry's Life of Blessed
Mary of Ognies, Bollandists, June 23, which implies
that communion was not so infrequent at Liege as
we have seen that it was elsewhere. We should
expect this from the amount of devotion kept up
in the towns of the Low Countries by such associa-
tions as the Beguines. It must not be forgotten
also that the Church, as is proved by decrees of
particular councils in the thirteenth century, es-
pecially in England, made continual efforts to

APPENDIX 459

induce the faithful to communicate three times a
year. Nevertheless, the exceeding infrequency of
communion among saints living in the world, as
well as the testimony of grave writers, such as
Alexander of Hales and Scotus, in unimaginative
scholastic treatises, incline me strongly to the view,
that such councils were most imperfectly obeyed,
and that communion more than once a year, except
in particular places, was the exception. This is
remarkably confirmed by Durandus, a similar
writer, who says in the beginning of the fourteenth
century: " Postremo vero refrigescente devotione
multorum statuit Innocentius Tertius ut saltern
semel in anno se in Paschate fideles communicent,
et adhuc pauci inveniuntur." — 4, Dist. 12, qu. 3.

Note H, p. 275. — On the Use of the Word
" Communio."
The passage is to be found in St Innocent's letter
to Exuperius, Bishop of Toulouse. I am aware that,
in the opinion of Morinus, " communio " here sig-
nifies absolution; as, however, I have Petavius on
my side, I venture to differ from him, and to con-
sider that it means the Holy Eucharist. It is true
that the words " communio " and " viaticum "
are very ambiguous, and that Morinus contends
that, if used without addition, they mean absolu-
tion. Notwithstanding, however, all difficulties of
interpretation, I cannot see how " pcenitentia " in
the Pope's letter can mean anything but the Sacra-
ment of Penance with absolution. In what possible
sense can Penance be given to a dying man if it

460 THE HOLY COMMUNION

does not mean the Sacrament ? In the parallel letter
of Pope Celestine to the Bishops of Gaul, there is
no doubt whatsoever that " pcenitentia " means
absolution in the Sacrament of Penance, for it is
equivalent to " liberare ex onere peccatorum." If
this be the case, " communio," in St Innocent's
letter, can only mean the Holy Eucharist. The only
difficulty in the way of this interpretation is the
use of " reconciliatio " and " remissio," as equiva-
lent to " communio." Yet so intimately was full
reconciliation connected in the minds of the Chris-
tians of the time with the reception of the Holy
Communion that it is not wonderful that these
words should be used of the whole act of readmission
to the Church, including the being admitted to the
Holy Eucharist, just as even now many of the poor
cannot be persuaded that they have been absolved
till they have received. For instance St Ambrose
says, lib. ii, de Pcenit. c. 3, " Quotiescunque peccata
donantur, corporis ejus Sacramentum sumimus ut
per sanguinem ejus fiat peccatorum remissio." Vide
also De Benedictionibus Patriarcharum, c. 9.
" Altaris reconciliatio " is also a common phrase
for the reception at once of the Holy Communion
and restitution to Church communion. Another
very strong reason for considering penance to in-
clude absolution is the frequent asseveration of the
principle in the primitive Church, that penance
was never imposed except with a view to absolu-
tion. Vide St Ambrose de Pcen. lib., c. 16; also St
Cyprian's letter to Antonianus, and even Tertullian,
quoted by Or si, p. 146.

APPENDIX 461

Thus it seems to be very probable that St
Innocent means here the Holy Communion, what-
ever may be held, of the use of the words " viati-
cum " and " communio " elsewhere. Certainly
Morinus, lib. vi, c. 21, argues very ably that in the
important thirteenth canon of Niceea, t<p6$iov and
Koivuvia mean absolution. I would, however,
though with diffidence, suggest that much may be
said in favour of their meaning the Holy Eucharist.
I do not see why the canon should not mean that
the Blessed Sacrament should be given to the
dying; in the latter clause zvyapiGTia would then
be not contrasted with, but a synonym for Koivwvia.
It is natural that whilst, as a general rule, the
dying should be ordered to receive the Holy
Eucharist, the bishop should still be commanded
to see that there was no impediment. It is certainly
very remarkable that John of Antioch's version of
the canons of Nicsea has Kal Koivwfxlag tv^wv /cat
irpoacpopaq /llet a a yjo v, as if todo away with the ambi-
guity of Koivtjvia, and to prove that tyoSiov means the
Holy Eucharist. The same is the reading of the
version in Hardouin, torn. 1, 430. Evidently the
Arabic version, canon nineteen, understood " viati-
cum " to mean the Holy Communion. — Hardouin,
p. 466. It is also evidently the reading of the version
of the canons of Nicaea used in the sixth Council of
Carthage. — Hardouin, 1247. These seem to be very
strong reasons in favour of the view that i<po§ iov
means Holy Communion. It is true that in the
seventy- seventh canon of the fourth Council of
Carthage, " viaticum," meaning seemingly abso-

462 THE HOLY COMMUNION

lution, is contrasted with " viaticum Eucharistiae."
On the other hand, a comparison of the canons
from the Councils of Orange and Girona, alleged in
Morinus, pp. 413, 414, with the seventy-sixth canon
of the same Council of Carthage, incline me to
think that even there " viaticum " means the
Blessed Sacrament.

A strong confirmation of this view of Pope
Innocent's letter is contained in the seventh article
of his letter to Decentius. No one can doubt that
the penitents there directed to be absolved on Holy
Thursday received the Holy Communion at once,
yet there also " remissio " is used of their readmis-
sion, as in the controverted letter; and, most
remarkably, Morinus himself, lib. 9, c. 3, interprets
"communio," in that letter to Decentius, of the
Holy Communion.

Note J, p. 278. — On Public Penance for
Secret Sins.
The difficulty of settling the point is proved by
the variety of the opinions of writers on the subject.
It is worth while briefly to state the history of the
controversy. Attention seems to have been first
drawn to the subject by Jansenist writers. Arnauld
boldly asserts that all those guilty of secret mortal
sins of every kind were subjected to public penance,
and deprived of the Holy Eucharist, under pain of
refusal of absolution in the primitive Church.
French Protestant writers, in arguing against the
existence of the Sacrament of Penance, were not
slow to avail themselves of this view, and pointed

APPENDIX 463

out the practical impossibility of such a legislation
and the consequent absurdity of the supposition.
With characteristic obstinacy, however, the Jan-
senists stuck to their point. Boileau, in his History
of Confession, though forced to give up a part of
the view, still persists in saying that every species
of sin, even of thought, if it was mortal, was sub-
jected to some kind of public penance, and visited
by the privation of the Holy Eucharist. " Defendo
tantummodo pcenitentibus pro omni specie peccati
mortalis aliquo tempore prudentia et arbitrio
Episcopi praefinito, Eucharistiae participatione in-
terdictum fuisse." — Cap. 3, p. 56. " Fateri necesse
est primis Ecclesise temporibus confestim actam
fuisse quandam pcenitentiam publicam pro quibus-
dam peccatis cogitationum quibus voluntatis con-
sensus conjunctus fuerat;" and in order to cover
the monstrous conclusion, he goes the length of
asserting, cap. 3, p. 55, " that very few sins of
thought are mortal." Petavius, in his " Penitence
Publique," first proved clearly that only three
kinds of secret mortal sins were subjected to public
penance. He, however, as well as Albaspinaeus,
still held that absolution was never given to those
three kinds of sin. Morinus and Orsi both refuted
this opinion. The controversy was now reduced to
one point. Morinus holds that secret sins of those
three kinds were not absolved without public
penance; Francolinus, on the contrary, is of opinion
that secret sins were in foro interno, never visited
with public penance without the consent of the
sinner, which was never extorted by the refusal of

464 THE HOLY COMMUNION

absolution. His theory is as follows: speaking of
the passages in which Fathers and Councils speak
of public penance for secret sins he says: "In
ejusmodi locis aut non agitur de Pcenitentiis sacra-
mentalibus sed extra- sacramentalibus, (Ecclesiam
vero posse in foro externo publice punire etiam
occulta delicta, non est dubium,) aut agitur quidem
de Pcenitentiis Sacramentalibus iisque publicis,
sed quae libere acceptabantur, cum pro delictis
occultis imponebantur." — Cler. Rom. 1, Disp. vii.
Perhaps it may be that the truth lies between the
opinions of these two writers, and that though the
Church, as a general rule, required public penance
for secret sins of those three kinds, she nevertheless
easily accepted a secret penance when a public
penance could not be had. Besides the arguments
brought forward in the text, it may be well to add
a few more.

1. There is a remarkable passage in Origen's
commentary on the Psalms, Horn. 2, in Ps. 37, on
the necessity of confession, which deserves to be
cited at length. " Si peccator ipse sui accusator
fiat, dum accusat semetipsum et confitetur, simul
evomit et delictum atque omnem morbi digerit
causam. Tantummodo circumspice diligentius, cui
debeas confiteri peccatum tuum : proba prius medi-
cum cui debeas causam languoris exponere, qui
sciat infirmari cum infirmante, flere cum flente,
qui condolendi noverit disciplinary ut ita demum,
si quid ipse dixerit, qui se prius et eruditum medi-
cum ostenderit, si quid consilii dederit, facias et
sequaris, si intellexerit et prgeviderit talem esse

APPENDIX 465

languorem tuum, qui in conventu totius Ecclesise
exponi debeat et curari, ex quo fortassis et caeteri
sedificari poterunt et tu ipse facile sanari multa
hoc deliberatione, et satis perito medici illius
consilio procurandum est." This passage was written
about the year 247, and contains a whole picture
of the confessional of the time. It shows that there
was a secret tribunal, a forum internum; that a
sinner might choose his confessor ; that the question
whether public penance should be done belonged
to the decision of that confessor, and lastly, that
it was a matter of counsel.

2. Let the reader look attentively at the argu-
ments brought forward by Morinus for his opinion,
lib. v, c. 9. It seems to me that several of them
imply that the Church principally had a view to
the punishment of scandalous sins in the discipline
which is there referred to. For instance, the example
of Theodosius is brought forward ; he is said to have
been visited with public penance, "Maxime quia
peccatum ejus celari non potuit." — St Aug.,
Serm. 392. Again, in the passage quoted as from
St Augustine (though really from St Caesarius of
Aries), the argument used for public penance is,
11 Quia justum est ut qui cum multorum destruc-
tion se perdiderit, cum multorum aedificatione se
redimat." If this is the case, it is easily conceivable
that secret sins which gave no scandal should be
exempted from the operation of the canons which
principally respected scandals.

3. Morinus himself shows that there were very
considerable differences in the mode of treating

HH

466 THE HOLY COMMUNION

secret and, public sinners. He says, lib. 5, c. 16,
" Impositio Pcenitentiae publicse ob crimina occulta,
sicut et reconciliatio, privatim a Presbytero et
Episcopo inconsulto plerumque fiebat." It seems
to me that the arguments of Morinus in the
same place, to prove that in these cases the penance
was public, are very inconclusive. Granting, how-
ever, that the penance was, as a general rule, public,
there would be surely little difficulty in allowing
the penitent to do his penance in private, that is,
not to join the crowd of public penitents, when he
had already been let off the publicity of the imposi-
tion, and the absolution. Morinus allows that con-
fession, imposition of penance, and. absolution
were, by a sort of dispensation in many cases, all
in private; it seems difficult to suppose that the
dispensation was not often, by a parity of reason-
ing, extended also to the publicity of the penance.

4. It was an acknowledged maxim with the early
Church that, whenever the number of sinners was
so great that a schism might be dreaded, she
relaxed her rules of public penance. For instance,
St Augustine says that, in his time, many sins had
become so common that they dared not excom-
municate a layman who was guilty of them. —
Enchiridion, c. 80. In another place, Cont. Ep.
Parminiani, lib. 3, 14, speaking of excommunica-
tion, he says: " Quum idem morbus plurimos occu-
paverit, nihil aliud bonis restat nisi dolor et gemitus,
nam consilia separationis et inania sunt et perni-
ciosa, si contagio peccandi multitudinem invaserit."
There can be no plainer proof that the Church

APPENDIX 4,67

enforced public penance when it could, but relaxed
the law when it was found impossible to exact the
penalty. It is curious also that the saint calls
" separation " " a counsel," an expression equiva-
lent to another used by St Csesarius of Aries,
where he exhorts his hearers " of their own accord
to remove themselves from the communion of the
Church," — St Aug. ed. Ben., torn, v, Appendix,
Serm. 104.

5. There is a remarkable passage in a sermon
ascribed by some to St Augustine, by the Benedic-
tines to St Caesarius of Aries. The preacher repre-
sents the sinner exhorted to public penance as
remonstrating: "Forte est aliquis qui dicat: ego
in militia positus sum, uxorem habeo et ideo pceni-
tentiam agere quomodo possum?" The saint
answers: " Quasi nos quando Pcenitentiam suade-
mus, hoc d camus et ut unusquisque magis sibi
capillos studeat auferre et non peccata dimittere
et vestimenta potius evellat quam mores." In other
words, he would have been satisfied with a firm
purpose of amendment without the external signs
of public penance. — St Aug. ed. Ben., torn. 5,
Appendix, Serm. 258.

6. Finally, the praise given to Fabiola, a lady of
rank, for appearing among public penitents, is
utterly inconsistent with the notion of its being
compulsory. — Fleury, lib. 18, 21.

Note K, p. 302. — On Jansenist Insincerity.
I have in the text accused Arnauld of insincerity,
especially in pretending that Jansenists only wished

hh2

468 THE HOLY COMMUNION

to introduce public penance for public sins. Insin-
cerity is a grave accusation, which I should not
bring forward unless I had grave reasons for making
the charge, which I will now substantiate. I am
perfectly aware that Jansenists varied in their
statements and in their practice; this very variation
is the chief proof of their want of veracity. It is
useless, therefore, to bring counter-assertions from
their writings : these only tell more strongly in my
favour, if I can oppose to them contrary facts and
assertions. Let the reader weigh the following proofs
that the Jansenists wished to introduce public
penance for secret sins. The absolute necessity for
public penance follows directly from the opinion
that absolutions given previous to the performance
of public satisfaction are null. That such was the
opinion of Jansenists seems to me plain.

1. Among the propositions delated to Cardinal
Mazarin, as being contained or fairly deduced from
the Augustinus, was the following: " Que la puis-
sance des clefs ne reside dans l'Eglise que pour
ceux qui font Penitence publique." Faillon, Vie de
M. Olier, torn, ii, pp. 149, 184.

2. The Jansenist ecclesiastics of the parish of St
Merri, at Paris, taught expressly, " que l'absolution
sacramentelle, sans la satisfaction, etait nulle."
— Ibid., p. 146. What they meant by satisfaction
is proved by their practice quoted below.

3. In the year 1672, an anonymous Jansenist
book was published in Belgium, containing the
following proposition: " Ordinem praemittendi
satisfactionem absolutioni induxit non politia aut

APPENDIX 469

institutio Ecclesiastica sed ipsa Christi lex et
praescriptio, natura rei id ipsum quodammodo
dictante."

4. Let us examine attentively Arnauld's doctrine
on the subject. I am quite aware that in Part ii,
c. 15, of the Frequente Communion, he says: " Ce
serait une grand erreur de condamner generalement
toutes les absolutions et communions, qui precedent
l'accomplissement de la satisfaction." It follows
from this that he does not say that all absolutions
before satisfaction are null. Nevertheless, it follows
from the principles which he lays down that the
enormous majority of absolutions thus given are
invalid, as Viva has shown on the 16th proposition,
condemned by Alexander VIII. Again, he does not
say that he requires public penance for all mortal
sins; nevertheless, it follows from his principles, as
we shall see that St Vincent of Paul has shown.

1. He lays it down as a rule that arguments
drawn from the universal tradition of the Church
are not probable, but demonstrative. He then
declares that that universal tradition shows that
public penance was exacted for all mortal sins
whatsoever in the primitive times, an opinion
which of itself separates, by an abyss, Jansenist
rigorism from the spirit of the Church. This opinion
he tries to prove at length throughout the second
part of his book. In c. 3, he proves that the Church
exacted public penance for secret sins. He says,
c. 8, that St Leo looked upon ecclesiastical penance
as " remede necessaire pour rentrer dans l'esp^rance
de la vie £ternelle " for all sins after baptism, and

470 THE HOLY COMMUNION

that it is not a canonical ordinance, but ordained
by Christ Himself. He also says that this was the
perpetual tradition of the Church and the common
sentiment of all the Church. From all this, not-
withstanding all protestations, it follows rigorously
that pub ic penance is necessary.

2. He lays it down as a general rule, that it is
" obligatory " to perform the penance before com-
munion, and the context shows that he includes
absolution: (he joins absolution to communion,
pp. 401, 404, 406, 503), the contrary is the
exception.

3. He says in many places, for instance pp. 492,
499, that the Fathers universally held that man to
make an unworthy communion, who communicates
before having done his penance.

4. He tells us of but one exception to this general
rule, viz., absolutions given to the dying, which
he takes care to inform us are generally useless.
— Part ii, c. 15. In that place, amongst others, he
speaks of " the obligation of doing penance before
reconciliation." It follows from this that, as a
general rule, absolutions given before the accom-
plishment of the penance are null, since an absolu-
tion given to a man not disposed to fulfil an obliga-
tion is useless.

5. I might have hesitated to accuse Arnauld of
unveracity, if St Vincent of Paul had not preceded
me. I may well shelter myself under the authority
of one who is a contemporary witness, one whose
name is a synonym for charity, and whose early
friendship for St Cyran exempts him from the

APPENDIX 471

charge of prejudice. I quote from letters written
by him to the Abb6 d'Horgny, and cited in the
Abb£ Maynard's new life of the saint, lib. v, c. 3.

" Quant a ce qu'on attribue au livre de la Fre-
quente Communion de retirer le monde de la fre-
quente hantise des sacrements, je vous repondrai
qu'il est veritable que ce livre detourne puissament
tout le monde de la hantise frequente de la sainte
Communion et de la sainte confession, quoiqu'il
fasse semblant, pour mieux couvrir son jeu d'etre
fort eloign^ de ce dessein.

" II est vrai que ce livre a 6te fait principalement
pour renouveller la penitence ancienne comme
nScessaire pour entrer en grace avec Dieu. Car quoi-
que l'auteur fasse quelquefois semblant de proposer
cette pratique ancienne comme seulement plus utile,
il est certain n^anmoins qu'il la veut pour neces-
saire, puisque par tout le livre il la represente
comme une des grandes verites de notre religion,
comme la pratique des ap6tres et de toute l'eglise
durant douze siecles, comme une tradition immu-
able, comme une institution de Jesus Christ. II
prend pour verite l'opinion qui porte qu'on ne
trouve dans les anciens Peres que la penitence
publique en laquelle VEglise exercat la puissance de
ses clefs ; d'ou il s'ensuit par une consequence tres
claire que M. Arnauld a dessein de retablir la peni-
tence publique pour toutes sortes de peches mortels,
et que ce n'est pas une calomnie de l'accuser, de
cela, mais une verity que Ton tire aisement de son
livre, pourvu qu'on le lise sans preoccupation
d'esprit. Vous me dites en second lieu qu'il est faux

472 THE HOLY COMMUNION

que M. Arnauld ait voulu introduire l'usage de faire
penitence avant l'absolution pour les gros pecheurs.
Je reponds que M. Arnauld ne veut pas seulement
introduire la penitence avant l'absolution, pour les
gros pecheurs, mais il en fait une loi generale pour
tous ceux qui sont coupables de peche mortel."
After quoting some words of the book he adds:
" II faut etre aveugle pour ne pas connaitre par
ces paroles que M. Arnauld croit qu'il est n6cessaire
de differer l'absolution pour tous les peches mortels
jusqu'a Paccomplissement de la penitence; et en
effet n'ai je pas vu pratiquer cela par M. de St
Cyran et ne le fait on pas encore a l'egard de ceux
qui se livrent entierement a leur conduite ? Cepen-
dant cette opinion est une heresie manifeste."
After the witness of the saint I might dispense
myself from proving, from the practice of the Jan-
senists, that they wished to introduce public
penance for secret sins ; I, however, add the follow-
ing fact:

The apologists of the Archbishop of Sens pre-
tended that this public penance was inflicted only
for public sins. How far this was true will appear
from the following passage: " M. du Hamel, lors-
qu'il etait cure du diocese de Sens, avait distingue
les penitents en quatre ordres. Ceux qui n'6taient
coupables que de peches secrets, formaient le
premier: ils assistaient, a l'office tout au bas de
l'Eglise et separes des autres paroissiens de quatre
pas de distance." Vie de M. Olier, torn, ii, 145. Du
Hamel was afterwards parish priest of St Mery
at Paris. Arnauld, notwithstanding his protest that

APPENDIX 473

he only meant public penance for public sins, was
perfectly well aware of Du Hamel's practice, for he
alludes to it in the preface of his " Frequente Com-
munion." Vide " Defense de la Discipline qui
s'observe dans le diocese de Sens," p. 140. The
absurdity of the revival of primitive discipline by
De Gondrin was not lost upon his contemporaries.
He was the Archbishop of Sens mentioned by De
Retz as being too scandalous a prelate for him to
imitate. Ste Beuve, Port Royal, torn, iv, 258.

INDEX.

Absolution, 112; conditions of,

257

Accidents, 41

African Writers, 267

Agde, Council of, 230, 235, 267

Age, tendencies of the, 98;
middle, not pious, 184

Ages, the Middle, 236, 252; in-
frequency of communion in,
238; not best period of
Church, 253

Alexander Severus, 208

Alphonso (St), 285; on weekly
communion, 349; on the
power of frequent com-
munion, 374, 405

Amalarius, 232

Ambrose (St), 290; on com-
munion, 321

Amon, 216

Ampdre, 75

Angelique, Mere, 299

Angels, creation of the, 33; in-
telligence of the, 134; powers
of fallen, 193

Animism, 151

Anne of Gonzaga, 298

Anselm (St), 39, 51

Anthony (St), of Egypt 116,
216, 217, 222, 224

Anthropomorphism, 224

Antioch, corrupt, 225

Arnauld, 39; book of, on fre-
quent communion, 300; rig-
orism of, 303 ; occasion of his
writing on frequent commu-
nion, 305; insincerity of,
470

Arsenius (St), 221, 228

Atoms, 68

Augustin (St), 230

Augustinus, of Jansenius, 300

Aurelius, Marcus, 203

Auxentius (St), 223

Avarice, 399

Bagnesi, the blessed M., 249
Basil (St), 210, 228; canons of,

264
Bede, Venerable, 233
Benedictines, communions of

the, 231, 240, 252
Benevolence, love of, 1 1 1
Berkeley, on matter, 57, 58
Bernard (St), 417
Berulle, de, Cardinal, 45
Bonaventure (St), on the life
of Our Lord in the Blessed
Sacrament, 141 ; on the
union of the soul with God,
195; his proof of the exis-
tence of God, 449, 451
Boniface VIII, 234
Borgia, Caesar, 239
Boscovich, 75
Bossuet, 39, 296, 380
Bouillon, Godfrey de, 238
Bourdaloue, 362, 380
Brocken, Spectre of the,

347
Buffon, 76

Cacciaguerra, 251

Cainites, 261

Callistus, Pope, 272

Canons, the penitential, 277

Capacity, obediental, 169

Cartesianism, sceptical, 39, 48 ;
how used by Spinoza, 51;
identifies matter with ex-
tension, 53

Cassian, 228

Catacombs, the, 202

Catherine (St), of Sienna, 116,
126, 195, 247, 252, 417

Catherine (St), of Genoa, 248

Catholic, the worldly, 399

Cauchy, 75

Celestine, 275

Chalice, the, why withheld
from the laity, 344
475

476

THE HOLY COMMUNION

Charlemagne, 233; on weekly
communion, 232

Charles, Duke of Brittany, 249

Cheselden, 76

Christianity, definition of, 426

Church, joyousness of the, 383

Cienfuegos, Card., Vita Ab-
scondita of, 143, 190, 192

Civilization, 355

Clara, the blessed, 249

Clitheroe, Mrs, 429

Cogito ergo sum, 39, 49, 52

Collette, the blessed, 249

Columba (St), 248

Commodus, 208

Communio, 459

Communion, Holy, 119, 124J
the conscious union of Our
Lord with the soul of man,
132; effects of, 165, 174;
opinions of theologians on
the effects of, 184, 196; daily
in the primitive Church,
201 ; infrequent, in the Mid-
dle Ages, 236, 458; frequent,
310; rules for, 322; daily,
351; qualifications for, 332;
of the worldly, 403

Complacency, love of, 1 1 1

Concomitance, 191

Conde, 45

Condillac, 55

Consciousness, 59

Creation, the, 135

Crime, statistics of, 357

Crusaders, the, 235

Cruveilheir, M., 76

Cuvier, 76

Cyprian (St), 267

Daniel (St) the Stylite, 227

Decius, 207

De Lugo, on habitual sin, 370

Descartes, 39; uncatholic na-
ture of his philosophy, 41;
popularity of his doctrines,
44; his scepticism, 49; his
criterion of truth, 51

Desert, Saints of the, 288
Diocletian, 207
Discernment of spirits, 353
Dispensations of God, 94
Dispositions of the communi-
cant, 339
Domine non sum dignus, 140
Dress, love of, 400
Duverney, 76

Eckhart, 241

Ecstatica, 236

Education, modern, 356

Elizabeth (St) of Portugal,
238

Elizabeth (St), 416; chant of,
418

Emilia, the blessed, 248

England, Puritanism of, 328;
morality of, 354

Ephrem (St), 227

Ether, 157

Eucharist, the, impossible be-
fore the incarnation, 117,
118; distributed by lay
hands during the persecu-
tions, 205

Euchites, 224

Euthymius (St), 218, 221

Excommunication, 262

Extension, 34; makes no differ-
ence to the innate powers of
the soul, 132; of matter, 456

Exuperius, 275

Fabiola, her penance, 467

Faith, justification by, 102

Faraday (Professor), on the
nature of matter, 76

Fathers of the Desert, 210;
their facilities for commu-
nion, 213, 217, 229

Fear of God, 420

Ferrer, St. Vincent, 245, 252

Fisher, Cardinal, 429

Fleury, 200

Fomes peccati, 324

Fora, 280

INDEX

477

Force, idea of, 61, 68; energies
of, 68

Forgiveness, 105

Formality of vision, 145

Forms, 28, 29, 150

Francesca Romana (St.), 249

Francis (St), 236

Francis (St) of Sales, 116, 424

Frequent Communion , 310;
rules of, 314; what it re-
quires, 319

Fronde, the, 297, 299

Fronto (St), 216

Gallienus, 207

Gerasimus (St.), 219

Gertrude (St), 195, 247

Gilbert (St) of Sempringham,
236

Gluttony, 399

God, fear of, 420; trust in, 421

Goethe, 76

Grace, sanctifying, 107, 174 ;
effect of, 109, no, in; the
want of man, 167 ; an entity,
168; source of, 172; sacra-
mental, 177; actual, 179;
habitual, 339

Gregory (St) the Great, 230

Gregory (St) VII, 234

Guillore, 380

Habits, power of, 366, 369
Habitudinarian, 360
Hales, Alexander of, 240
Helen, the blessed, of Udine,

249
Hermits, 220
Hippolytus, 271, 273; rigorism

of condemned, 274
Host, Jesus in the, 129
Howard, Philip, 429

Ida (St), 241
Ignatius (St), bishop, 279
Ignatius (St), 250
Images, how necessary to
vision, 155

Imperfect, Communions of the,

308
Indevout, Communions of the,

339
Indivisibility is not absolute

simplicity, 147
Infinity, idea of, 64
Innocent I, 275; on penance,

292
Innocent XI, on communion,

352
Insincerity of Arnauld, 470
Intellectus agens, 446
Intuitions, 65; scholastic and

Leibnitzian, 449

Jane Frances (St) de Chantal,

424
Jansenism, 299; condemnation

of, in the practice of the

Church, 360
Jansenists, attempt to revive

public penance, 294, 300;

insincerity of, 467
Jansenius, 301
John the Abbot, 223
John Chrysostom (St), 226,

229
John Climacus (St.), 223
Jonas, bishop of Orleans, 232
Julia Mammaea, 208
Juliana Falconieri (St), 127
Jussieu, 76

Justification, process of, 105
Justinian, 228

Kant, 447

Kings, the three, 139

Knowledge, morning and even-
ing of the angels, 135; how
acquired, 175

Lapsed, the, 285
Latrocinium, 226
Laura, 218
Lavoisier, 76

478

THE HOLY COMMUNION

Leibnitz, 47, 50, 61 ; dissatis-
fied with modern philosophy,
59; opposed Descartes, 61;
on the idea of substance, 65 ;
on the composition of mat-
ter, 67

Leo (St) condemns rigorism,
276

Lessius on the life of Our Lord
in the Blessed Sacrament, 142

Lidwina (St), 247

Life of Our Lord in the Host,
160

Linnaeus, 76

Locke, birth of, 54 ; denied the
idea of substance, 56

Loneliness, 424

Louis XIII, 294

Louis XIV, 294, 295

Louis (St), 116; communions
of, 237

Louis (St) of Toulouse, 238

Love of God, 92 ; power of, 180

Lucian (St), 204

Lutgardis (St), 240

Lyons, Martyrs of, 203

Mabillon, 44

Macarius (St), 212, 217, 221

Mackintosh, Sir James, 75

Malatesta, the blessed, 249

Marcia, 208

Marcian, 225

Marcion, 261, 284

Marin, 214

Mark, Abbot, 222

Mary (St) of Egypt, 229, 287

Margaret (St) of Cortona, 241

Massillon, 380

Matter, 26, 30; doctrine of St
Thomas on, 29, 37; modern
theories of, 39 ; Descartes on,
40; Spinoza on, 52; Locke
on, 55; Berkeley on, 57;
cause of phenomena, 67, 88 ;
unextended, 72, 85; can it
think? 169; authorities on
the non-extension of, 453

Matrimony, sacrament of, 188

Mellitus (St), 231

Messalians, 224

Metanea, Monks of, 212

Molecules, 68

Monro, 76

More, Sir Thomas, 429

Morinus, 285

Moses, Abbot, 223

Nature, human, 175
Necessary truths, 61
Nero, 260
Newton, 47
Nominalists, the, 142

Olier, M., 297
Onophrius (St), 229
Operations of Our Lord in the

Blessed Sacrament sensible,

182
Opium eating, 366
Opus operatum, 326, 339, 374
Origen, 208
Orsi, 200

Pacomius (St), 214

Paganism, 95

Pantheism, 50, 114, 189, 242;
the peculiar heresy opposed
by St Thomas, 442

Paphnutius, Abbot, 223, 229

Paraguay, 205, 309

Pascal, 45

Paul (St), Vincent of, 297

Paul of Samosata, 208

Pavillion, Bishop of Aleth, 302

Penance, public, 281, 462; not
imposed on clerics, 283

Perpetua (St), 205

Petavius, 303; on public pen-
ance, 463

Phantasma, 135, 153

Phenomena of nature, 24; in
what sense real, 69; on the
use of the word, 436

Philip, the Arab, 208

INDEX

479

Philip (St) Neri, 116, 246; pro-
motes frequent communion,
250 ; advice of, to communi-
cants, 326, 343

Pichon, Pere, 334

Pior (St), 216.

Poemen, Abbot, 221

Polycarp, 203

Poor, the, to be treated with
respect, 426

Port Royal, 300

Positivism, school of, 85

Possession, 193

Power, imperial, 169

Predestination, marks of, 347

Priestley, 76

Principles, supernatural, 426

Puseyism, 328

Quietism, 223

Raymond of Capua, 247

Realism, 40

Reaumer, 76

Recidive, 258, 360, 363

Reformatories, 375

Respectability, 389

Retz, De, Cardinal, 45, 299

Reverence, 341

Richelieu, 39

Riches, 385

Rigorism, 259; condemned,

274; origin of modern, 299;

leads to laxity, 306
Rodriguez, 211
Roses, wars of the, 239
Rosweide, 215

Sabas (St), 219

Sable, Madame de, 299

Sacrament, the Blessed, life of
Jesus in, 123, 128 ; science of
Jesus in, 137; given to all,
174; for whom instituted,
185, 256

Sacramenta propter homines,
256, 259, 284

Savonarola, 245

Scaramelli, on weekly commu-
nion, 349
Scavini, 398
Scete, churches at, 217
Schisms, by whom supported,

402
Science, infused of Our Lord,

138, 161
Scillitan, the martyrs, 207
Scotus, 240
Scruples, 310
Searching after God, 94
Selfishness, 394
Sens, Archbishop of, 296, 473
Sensation, 147; scholastic

theory of, 153
Senses, can Our Lord use them
in the Blessed Sacrament/'
140
Serapion, 204
Severus, Septimus, 207
Simeon (St) Stylites, 224
Simeon (St), the elder, 227
Sinai, monastery of, 228
Sins, venial, no obstacle to
communion, 322, 336; chief
source of, 325
Soul of Jesus, 130; form of the

body, 151
Space, idea of, 70
Space, scholastic idea of, 434
Species, immaterial, 136
Spinoza, 50; retorts upon Des-
cartes, 52
Stahl, 76
St Cyran, 300
St Hilaire, Geoffrey, 76
St Venant, de, M., 76
Stewart, Dugald, 75
Suarez on the life of Our Lord
in the Blessed Sacrament,
141, 156; on weekly com-
munions, 329, 349
Substance, spiritual, 34; exis-
tence of, never disproved,
38 ; idea of, whence it comes,
72
Summa of St Thomas, 3

480

THE HOLY COMMUNION

Surin, 380
Suso, Henry, 242

Tauler, 242, 247 252

Tertullian, 267

Tharcisius, 204

Theatres, 209

Theodore (St), 215

Theodore (St), of Canterbury,
231

Theodulus (St), 227

Thomas (St), of Canterbury,
429

Thomas (St), 4, 24; his doc-
trine of substance, 29, 37, 66,
71; on the effects of com-
munion, 179; on worldliness,
399; philosophy of, 441

Thomas of Jesus, 221

Toletus, Card., on frequent
communion, 374

Trajan, 203

Transubstantiation, objec-
tions made to the doctrine
of, 10, 12, 57; what it is, 30,
32; supernatural, 149

Trent, Council of, 323

Truths, necessary, 61

Union with God, 102 ; what it
is, 119; how wrought in
Holy Communion, 191

Unitarianism
theism, 52
Unrest, 416

.

leads to Pan

Vainglory of the devout, 346

Valerian, 207

Valliere, Duchess de la, 298

Varani, the Blessed Baptista,
249

Vasquez on daily communion,
351

Vaubert, Father, 319

Vienne, Council of, 240

Vision, the beatific, of Jesus,
133; formality of, 145;
theories of, 154

Viva on the Life of Our Lord
in the Blessed Sacrament,
142; on the effects of com-
munion, 184

Vocations, 390

Voltaire, 55

World, hateful to God, 282;
kinds of, 389; contradicts
Christianity, 394

Worldliness, 384; what it con-
sists in, 391, 397; definition
of, 404

Zeno (St), 223
Zenobia, Queen, 208
Zosimus, Abbot, 229

Letch worth : At the Ardea Press.

DALACIRNS, J.D. BQT

Holy Communion. 1339

.D3-
v.2