in
his last illness the consecrated Host alone was given to Him.

The Christians in time of persecution, confessors of the faith confined in
prison, travellers on their journey, soldiers before engaging in battle
and hermits living in the desert were permitted to keep with them and to
fortify themselves with the consecrated Bread--as Tertullian, Cyprian,
Basil, Ambrose and other Fathers of the Church testify.

Moreover, the Mass of the _Presanctified_, celebrated in the Latin church
on Good Friday only, and in the Greek church on every day in Lent, except
Saturdays and Sundays, the officiating Priest receives the consecrated
Bread alone.(385)

In all these instances the communicants never doubted that they received
the Lord's Supper in its integrity. Surely the conscientious guides of the
faith would sooner withhold altogether the Sacred Host from their flocks
than permit them to partake of a mutilated Sacrament.

Second--In the primitive days of the Church the Holy Communion used to be
imparted to infants, but only in the form of wine. The Priest dipped his
finger in the consecrated chalice and gave it to be sucked by the infant.
This custom prevails to this day among the schismatic Christians of all
Oriental rites. In some instances the Sacred Host, saturated in the cup,
is given to the child.(386)

Third--Public Communion was, indeed, usually administered in the first ages
under both forms. The faithful, however, had the privilege of dispensing
with the cup and of partaking only of the bread until the time of Pope
Gelasius, in the fifth century, when this general, but hitherto optional,
practice of receiving under both kinds was enforced as a law for the
following reason:

The Manichean sect abstained from the cup on the erroneous assumption that
the use of wine was sinful. Pope Gelasius, in order to detect and condemn
the error of those sectaries, left it no longer optional with the faithful
to receive under one or both forms, but ordained that all should
communicate under both kinds.

This law continued in force for several ages, but towards the thirteenth
century, for various causes, it had gradually grown into disuse, with the
tacit approval of the Church. The Council of Constance, which convened in
1414, established a law requiring the faithful to communicate under the
form of bread only; and in taking this step, the Council was actuated both
by reasons of propriety and of religion.

The wide-spread dif