Water and Blood, of which the one is the symbol of the Laver, the other the pledge of the Mysteries."

The word mystery is also common in this sense in the early Liturgies; as, for example, in that of S. Mark :-"We thank thee... for the reception of the holy Mysteries; "1 in the Mozarabic:-" Receive the kiss of love and peace, that ye may be fit for the most holy Mysteries of God."2 In the Leonian and Gelasian Sacramentaries :-" Make them worthy, to whom Thou grantest to be partakers of so great a mystery;' "Let the holy Mysteries purify us, O Lord."3 From this last source, through the Gregorian revision, the word came into the Latin Liturgies of the early English Church, and through them into the Office which we now use :-" So shall ye be meet partakers of those holy Mysteries;" "We heartily thank Thee for that thou dost vouchsafe to feed us, who have duly received these holy Mysteries," etc.

Sometimes the ancients called this holy Sacrament emphatically The Mystery, in the singular number. St. Athanasius, for example, in a synopsis of the 26th chapter of the Gospel of S. Matthew:-"The disciples are sent to prepare the Passover. Christ rebukes Judas. He delivers the Mystery." S. Gregory of Nazianzum :-" Jesus Himself in the upper room imparted of the Mystery to those initiated in the higher things." Paula and Eustochium, in the fourth century, call it "the Christian Mystery in the Body and Blood of the Saviour." The compiler of the Catena on S. Mark ascribed to Victor of Antioch, "the Mystery of the New Testament." 7 "7

10. SYNAXIS.]-This word means congregation or assembly, and is equivalent to synagogue. As it is only found in Christian writers, we may conclude that it was expressly chosen by them to distinguish their own assemblies from those of the Jews. The restricted and peculiar use of it arose from the fact that the celebration of the holy Eucharist was at the earliest period the only occasion on which the Church assembled. They might go up to the Temple at the hours of prayer, or pray together in their own houses, but all

1 Renaudot, Liturg. Orient. tom. i. p. 163; Par. 1716.

2 Missal. Mozar. a Lesleo, tom. i. p. 227; Rom. 1755.

3 Liturg. Rom. Vet. Muratorii, tom. i. coll. 383, 698, et passim, compare Sacram. Greg. tom. ii. coll. 165-6, etc.; Ven. 1748.

4 Synopsis Script. Opp. tom. ii. p. 180; ed. Ben. Par. 1698.

5 Orat. xliv. in S. Pentec. tom. i. p. 713.

Ad Marcell. inter Epp. S. Hieronym, n. xliv. tom. iv. p. ii. col. 547. 7 Ed. Cramer, p. 422; Oxon, 1840.

who believed in the same city would meet together in one place for the Holy Communion, the one distinctive rite of ordinary Christian worship. There is reason to think that when persecution had ceased, and prayers without a celebration were said in the churches, this name of Synaxis was given especially to those more solemn assemblies at which. the Sacrament was celebrated. This at least seems implied by S. Chrysostom,1 when he speaks of "the awful mysteries

which are celebrated at every Synaxis." We might gather the same thing from Socrates,2 when he tells us that at Alexandria, on Wednesdays and Fridays, by ancient custom, the Scriptures were read and interpreted, and "all things done that belong to a Synaxis, except the celebration of the Mysteries." Hence to separate from the Synaxis was to excommunicate, and the phrase is so used by Theophilus3 of Alexandria, A.D. 385. The full appropriation of the word to the Mysteries was probably only local, or perhaps in some degree an affectation. It is always used in this sense by pseudo-Dionysius, who puts and answers the question, why that which is common to many rites (as they all bring people together) should by implication be "ascribed to the Eucharist especially, and that alone be called Communion and Synaxis?" He gives the mystical reason, that the Eucharist is the means of spiritual union, and in this he has been followed by others, as by John Maro" It is called Synaxis, because it gathers together the several lives that are in us, and other things that are divided, and unites them with the one God."

4

11. THE HOLY (Things, or perhaps Mysteries or Gifts, understood).]-The consecrated elements, rather than the celebration, are to be understood by this term. In all the Oriental Liturgies the people were invited to draw near and receive, by the exclamation, "Holy [things] for the holy." In the Mozarabic the same expression occurs in the same

1 Hom. xxv. in S. Matt. § 3, tom. vii. p. 352. 2 Hist. Eccl. L. v. c. xxii. p. 235; Par. 1686. 3 Bever. Pand. tom. ii. p. 375.

4 Eccl. Hier. c. iii. sect. i. Opp. tom. i. p. 282; Antv. 1634. In mediæval Latin, synaxis, from having signified, when first borrowed from the East, the gathering of the monks to their prayers, came at length to be applied to the cursus or Office of Prayer used at the canonical hours. Thus in the Excerptions of Ecgbriht :-"The holy fathers ordained the synaxis to be sung, which the clergy ought to sing every day at proper hours. The first is the nocturnal synaxis, etc. These seven synaxes we ought daily to offer to God with great concern for ourselves and for all Christian people." Johnson, vol. i. p. 189; see also Ducange in v.

5

Expos. Minist. Obl. c. ii. n. i. Assem. Cod. Lit. tom. v. p. 231.
Leslie, tom. i. p. 232.

place of the Liturgy, but it now begins a short prayer said by the Priest in a low voice. It is found in the Liturgy in the Apostolic Constitutions,1 and has the testimony of S. Cyril of Jerusalem,-" After that (i.e. after the Lord's Prayer) the Priest says, Holy things for the holy. The (gifts) lying in view (on the altar) are holy, being consecrated by the coming on to them of the Holy Ghost; and ye are holy, being graced by (the gift of) the Holy Ghost." It was doubtless from this rite, so early, and, at one time, universal, that the sacramental Body and Blood of Christ came to be called the Holy Things. The earliest example is in a Greek inscription once in the wall of an ancient cemetery at Autun, and not later than the close of the second century,-"Receive the honeysweet (food) of the Holy Things of the Saviour. Eat, drink, having IXOT3 in thy hands."4 Dionysius" the Great, A.D. 247, of a fearful communicant,-"I bade him take courage, and with firm faith and a good conscience come to the reception of the Holy Things." With S. Basil "to be received to the Holy Things," is to be received to Communion. There was a similar use of the singular. Thus S. Cyprian, A.D. 251, says of a certain unworthy communicant," He could not eat and handle the Holy Thing of the Lord; he found on opening his hands that he was holding a cinder."

12. THE GOOD THING.]-The holy Eucharist is so called, says Suicer, because therein, "in a mystery, we receive Christ Himself, in whom are all the treasures of good things, and Who alone is truly good." It was probably only a local usage. S. Basil, in Cappadocia, A.D. 370, orders certain offenders to be "cut off from the communion of the Good Thing," and permits penitents, after going through several stages of probation, to be restored to "the communion of the Good Thing."10

1 L. viii. c. xiii. Patr. Apost. Cotelerii, tom. i. p. 404.

2 Catech. Myst. v. c. xvi. p. 300.

3 That is, Jesus; this word, the Greek for fish, being composed of the first letters of the Greek words which we should render, "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour."

4 The original is given, with remarks, by Dr. Pusey, Doctrine of the Real Presence from the Fathers, p. 337.

5 Euseb. Hist. Eccl. L. vii. c. ix. p. 208.

6 Ep. ad Amphiloch. Can. lvii. Bever. Pandect. tom. ii. p. 144.

7 De Lapsis, p. 133; Sim. p. 132; and, less openly, De Unit. Eccl. 8 Thesaur. Eccles. in v. 'Ayalós.

p. 110.

9 Can. lv. Bever. Pandect. tom. ii. p. 113. 10 Can. xxii. p. 79, and Can. Ixxv. p. 127.

13. THE PERFECT THING, or PERFECTION.]-This also seems to have been partial. The holy Eucharist was so called because it was the goal to which the Catechumen or the Penitent looked forward, when the course of their training and discipline should be complete, and because to partake of it is to enjoy the fulness of Christian privilege, and spiritual grace and blessing in the largest measure vouchsafed here. The phrase is frequently used in the Canons of the Council of Ancyra, in Galatia, A.D. 314; e.g. of certain Penitents the Council decrees that "for one year they shall be Hearers, for three years Prostrators, that for two years they shall communicate in prayer, and then attain to the Perfect Thing "1 (or, "to Perfection"), i.e. to the holy Eucharist.

Connected with the above is the title PERFECTION OF PERFECTIONS, or FULFILMENT OF FULFILMENT. It is so called, says John Maro,2 a Syrian writer, "because it embraces and includes all perfections. Also Jesus Himself, who is the Lord of Mysteries, perfects and completes the other Mysteries hid and veiled under the mystic species in this. Moreover, because through it we are united with Him who is absolutely perfect."

14. VIATICUM VITÆ, or VIATICUM.-Both in the Liturgy of S. James, and in that of S. Mark, is a petition that the reception of the Gifts may be for a Viaticum (épódiov) of everlasting life." The word, both in Greek and Latin, became a conventional phrase for a last Communion. Thus the Council of Nicæa decreed that "if any one were departing, he should not be deprived of the last and most necessary Viaticum," or provision for the way. Similarly in the West, Xystus, A.D. 433, says that Bassus was condemned by the synod of Rome, "but so that the Viaticum should not be refused him at the last." Before him, Siricius,7 A.D. 385, had ruled that lapsed penitents should, at the point of death, be "relieved with the Viaticum." "This Mystery," says Paschasius, A.D. 844, "is sometimes called Viaticum, because if one partakes of it on the way (in via), he arrives at that life which he hath already in himself."

6

1 Can. iv. Pandect. tom. i. p. 379; Sim. Cann. v. ix. xx. xxii. xxiii. 2 Expos. Minist. Obl. c. ii. n. iii. Assem. tom. v. p. 232.

3 Lit. PP. p. 38.

5 Can. xiii. Bever. Pandect. tom. i. p. 74.

4 Renaud. tom. i. p. 163.

6 Ep. iii. Labb. Conc. tom. iii. col. 1264; Conc. Rom. cap. vi. col. 1265. Can. v. Labb. tom. ii. col. 1019.

8 De Corp. et Sang. Dom. c. xix. § 5, col. 1329.

CHAPTER II.

The Conditions of Communion.

SECTION I. Of the Notice of Intention to Communicate.

RUBRIC I-PARAGRAPH I.

¶ So many as intend to be partakers of the Holy Communion shall signify their names to the Curate at least some time the day before.

THE CURATE.]-The Curate is the clerk who has the cure of souls in a parish or other ecclesiastical district, whether he be the incumbent or the duly appointed and licensed substitute for an absent or incapable incumbent. In the language of the Canon Law, Bishops and Archdeacons are also curates,1 and a Perpetual Curate is defined to be "such as the Bishop in his Diocese, the Rector and Vicar in his Parish, and whoever else has a perpetual title to a benefice to which the cure of souls is attached." "2 The Archdeacon was considered to have the cure of souls, and was therefore a Curate, because it was a part of his duty to punish Presbyters whom he found neglecting to teach their people the Creeds, the Commandments, the two Evangelical Precepts, etc., and to compel them to make good their omissions. Those whom we now more commonly call Curates are more properly (at least when the incumbent is not resident)"temporary resident) "temporary Vicars." They were also distinguished from the beneficed Clergy by the title of "Parish Priests."5

b THE DAY BEFORE.]-In the two Books of Edward and the Scotch Liturgy, A.D. 1637, it was ordered that those who intended to communicate should "signify their names to the

1 Joh. de Athona in Constit. Othon. gloss. Confessores, p. 15; Oxf. 1679. Unusquisque Curatus, sc. Episcopus, Archidiaconus, et Rector Parochialis.

2 Lyndwood, Provinciale, L. v. tit. 5, gl. perpetuum, p. 289; Oxf. 1679. 3 Constit. Peckham, Lyndwood, L. i. tit. 10, p. 51.

↑ Constit. Arundel, Lyndwood, L. v. tit. 5, p. 291.

5 Ibid. and see gl. Vic. Temp.