It seems to me that the charge of withholding the cup comes with very bad grace from Protestant teachers, who destroy the whole intrinsic virtue of the Sacrament by giving to their followers nothing but bread and wine. The difference between them and us lies in this—that under one form we give the substance, while they under two forms confessedly give only the shadow.
In examining the history of the Church on the subject we find that up to the twelfth century communion was sometimes distributed in one form, sometimes in another, commonly in both.
First—St. Luke tells us that the converts of Jerusalem “were persevering in the doctrine of the Apostles, and in the communion of bread (as the Eucharist was sometimes familiarly called), and in prayer.”[383] Again he speaks of the Christian disciples assembled at Troas on the Lord's day, “to break bread.”[384] We are led to conclude from these passages that the Apostles sometimes distributed the communion in the form of bread alone, as no reference is made to the cup.
It was certainly the custom to carry to the sick only the consecrated Host. Surely if there is any period of life when nothing should be neglected which conduces to salvation it is the time of approaching death. Eusebius tells us that the aged Serapion received only the Sacred Bread at the hands of the Priest. In the Life of St. Ambrose we are told that 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 [pg 305] 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.