CHAPTER V

RESERVATION OF THE EUCHARIST

In accordance with a long standing usage, the sick and infirm are still communicated with the Reserved Sacrament—always in both kinds. This has certainly been done since the early part of the eighteenth century, and there is a persistent tradition in the remoter parts of the north of Scotland to the effect that it has been continuous from still earlier days. In more recent times it has existed as one of the old traditional customs which belong to the Scottish liturgy, but it was looked upon by a previous generation as antecedent to any form of that rite as now used.

From the Reformation until after 1718, there is no explicit evidence for reservation in Scotland; indeed the direction of the modern English Prayer Book that what remains of the Holy Eucharist shall not be carried out of the church, first appears in the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637. On the other hand there seems to be nothing said against the practice in all the controversial writings of that period-at least by the Church party. The struggle was not between clinical celebrations and clinical communion with the reserved elements, but between clinical communion and denying the Eucharist to the sick. This was a subject of fierce controversy during the reign of James VI (I of England) and the Sacrament was restored to the sick by one of the famous Five

Articles of Perth in 1618. During the next few years we have record of sick communions, but nothing is said whether reservation was used. About the time of the Perth Assembly, steps were being taken towards the provision of a Scottish Prayer Book. Later on, a draft

1 "The "Five Articles of Perth" were agreed upon by a General Assembly held there in 1618. They provided for (1) kneeling at Communion (2) Baptism in private when necessary (3) Communion of the Sick (4) Confirmation (5) Keeping of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension and Whitsunday. The third ran as follows:

"If any good Christian visited with long sicknesse and knowne to the Pastor, by reason of his present infirmity vnable to resort to the Church for receiving of the holy Communion, or being sick, shall declare to the Pastor vpon his conscience, that he thinks his sicknes to be deadły, and shall earnestly desire to receiue the same in his house: The Minister shall not deny to him so great a comfort, lawfull warning being giuen to him upon the night before, and that there be three or foure of good Religion and conuersation, free of lawful impediments, present with the sicke person to communicate with him, who must also prouide a conuenient place in his house, and all things necesary for the reuerend administration thereof, according to the order prescribed in the Church."

The "order" was the Communion service and administration in Knox's Book of Common Order.

Dr. David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin, speaking of private communion in reference to this enactment, says :—

"Our owne Church hath practised the same (i.e. private communion) in former times, as was qualified in diuers particulars at the last Assembly. So where the reformed Churches haue approved it, and wee ourselves by our owne practice, now to stand against it, when, by a speciall Canon, it is appointed to bee done, cannot but bee thought obstinate disobedience."

A true Narration of all the passages of the proceedings in the generall Assembly of the Church of Scotland, holden at Perth the 25 of August. Anno Dom. 1618 . . . . . with a just defence of the articles therein concluded, against a seditious Pamphlet. By Dr. Lyndesay, Bp. of Brechin, London, 1621, pp. 32, pt. ii. 107 et sq.

.....

2 That private Communion was practised in the 17th century, especially in the North, there is good evidence, e.g.

In the Session Records of S. Nicholas, Aberdeen, occur the following: 25 July 1630 Sibbaldo moderatore

Receaved be the Collector threttie fyve shillinges of Collection at Alexr. Hilles wyff her commonion

book was sent to London by the Scottish bishops,' but was practically rejected through the influence of Laud, who with Wren and other English divines and the Scottish bishops Maxwell and Wedderburn, ended in substituting the far-famed and ill-fated Prayer Book of 1637, which contains a service for a clinical celebration exactly like that in the English Book of 1559, as well as a rubric at the end of the Liturgy forbidding what remains of the consecrated elements to be taken out of

27 November 1631 Sibbaldo moderatore

The Sessioun appointes this day aucht dayes the holy communion to be celebrat and for that effect ordainnes the ministeris To Intimat the samen to the people out of the pulpettis of both the kirkis.

xj decembris 1631 Sibbaldo moderatore

Collectit to the poore at the auld kirk dore be Archibald Beanes upon thirsday efter sunday being wponn the fourt of december ten pundis and be Alexander Patersoun at the new kirk dore wponn sonday and twysday thaireeftir six pundes xij shillings six penneis

Collectit at the priuat communion ministered to Marioun Beanes aught punds

Vigesimo tertio die mensis decembris 1632 magistro Alexandro Ross moderatore

Collectit siklyk to the poore at the ministration of the holie communion on sonday the sixteene day of December. . . . .

Item gevin be Alexander Stewart at the ministration of the communion to him in his house be occasion of his sicknes the soume of Ten poundes aughtene shillinges on the sixtene day of December..

Tertio Novembris 1633 Doctore Forbesio moderatore

Collectit to the poore

Item nyne shillinges gewin by John Touche at the receaving of the sacrament of the Lordes Supper

1 See Scottish Liturgies of the Reign of James VI. "The Booke of Common Prayer and administration of the Sacraments with other rites and ceremonies of the church of Scotland as it was sette doune at first, before the change thereof made by ye archb. of canterburie, and sent back to Scotland." Edited with an introduction and notes by the Rev. G. W. Sprott, Edinburgh 1871.

the church.1 The curious thing is that the draft book of 1629 which did not contain this prohibition was Puritan to a degree, and the 1637 Prayer Book in which it first appears was the very reverse. Perhaps the explanation is that the use of reservation for the sick was looked upon as part of the administration of the sacrament to the faithful which had already taken place in the service. Certainly Laud, Maxwell and Wedderburn drew up the new rubric to prevent the scandalous misuse of the holy gifts which was common among the puritanical clergy. Probably no one thought about

'Dr. Sprott called it "the fourth or fifth draft" adding "There was that of the original Committee in 1617; that approved by King James a year or two later, and sent up to Charles in 1629; the book referred to as signed by the King, Sep. 28, 1634, the draft taken to London by Maxwell, and approved with corrections May 1634, partly printed towards the end of that year but then destroyed; and lastly that of Laud and Wren, written into an English Prayer Book, April, 1636." Scottish Liturgies of James VI., pp. lxiv., lxv.

This draft book contains the following rubric at the end of the Visitation of the Sick :-

["Line cut off] able to resoirt to the Church for receiving the holy communion, and desire earnestly to receive the same declaring upon his conscience that he thinks his sicknesse to be deadlie, the minister shall not deny him ye comfort, lawfull warn. ing being given him, upon the night before and some of good religion and conversation being present to communicat with him."

In the book of 1637 the Communion of the Sick is the same as in the English Prayer Book of 1559, the word "minister" and not "celebrate " being used. At the end of the Communion Service is the following rubric, which appears for the first time :

And to take away the superstition, which any person hath or might have in the Bread and Wine, (though it be lawfull to have wafer bread) it shall suffice that the Bread be such as is usuall: yet the best and purest Wheat Bread that conveniently may be gotten. And if any of the Bread and Wine remaine, which is consecrated, it shall be reverently eaten and drunk by such of the communicants only as the Presbyter which celebrates shall take unto him, but it shall not be carried out of the Church. And to the end that there may be little left, he that officiates is required to consecrate with the least, and then if there be want, the words of consecration may be repeated again, over more, either bread or wine: the Presbyter beginning at these words in the prayer of consecration (vur Saviour in the night that he was betrayed, took, &c)

reservation, or if it was considered as a remote contingency, the compilers took it for granted that the rubric would be interpreted in the sense in which the non-jurors explained and extended it in 1718. We may remember that the Caroline divines must have known of reservation, as they were well versed in Christian antiquity, and that the non-jurors were their direct descendents as far as theological opinion is concerned. We may also note that in the seventeenth century there was no outcry against reservation which would explain this prohibition as applying to it. In the middle ages there were very similar prohibitions against the misuse of any of the reserved Sacrament that might not be required for communicating the sick. In the light of these facts the writer would venture to suggest that the continuous use of reservation, which northern local tradition claims, is not impossible, although definite evidence is still wanting for the period 1560-1718, and that the interpretation of the rubric of 1662, which was condemned. by the Archbishops at Lambeth in 1899 is at least not unreasonable.'

1 The Lambeth "Opinions" on Incense and Reservation of 1899 are greatly discredited. The practice of the particular clergy who were singled out as examples was for the most part based not upon any sound knowledge of liturgical history and principles, but rather upon an unauthorised copying of a foreign rite. Worse test cases could scarcely have been found, for— with one exception-no honest man could say from a Catholic stand-point that all the details of what those clergy did were lawful in the English dioceses. From the two chief bishops in the land, however, a wider knowledge of the subjects might have been looked for. One might have thought that the history of the liturgical use of Incense and of the Reservation of the Holy Sacrament would have received original and independent investigation at the hands of those who were to give decisions on the subjects. The actual "opinions" make it very plain that nothing of the kind was done.

Reservation for the sick has a fair claim to be called a Catholic custom in the strict meaning of the word, and in view of the history of the so-called