Annotation CCLXVIII

”Show ye, therefore, the demonstration which is of your charity.” — 2 Corinthians 8:24

Whether it is necessary to exhibit the Eucharist under both species to the laity.

Chrysostom, [in] homily 18 on the second [epistle] to the Corinthians, seems to indicate that the Eucharist is to be exhibited to the laity under both species of bread and wine, saying thus: “BUT there is [a case] where the priest differs in nothing from the subject [layman] — as when the dreadful mysteries are to be enjoyed: for similarly all of us are deemed worthy to receive those [mysteries], not as in the old law, where the priest indeed ate part, but the people [another] part, and it was not lawful for the people to be partaker of those [things] of which the priest was partaker: but now [it is] not so; rather, one body is set before all, and one cup.” John Calvin, [in] chapter 18 of his Institutes, strives to build up, by this sentence of Chrysostom, the dogma of the recent Greeks and Lutherans, who assert that the Eucharist under both species is necessarily to be delivered to all Christians. He confirms this also by a saying of Jerome: who, in the commentary on Malachi, chapter 2, says: “PRIESTS, who confect the Eucharist, and distribute the blood of the Lord to the people.” To these he adds a decree of Pope Gelasius, which in the decrees of the pontiffs, distinction 2, chapter “Comperimus,” is adduced in these words: “WE HAVE FOUND [Comperimus], that certain [persons], having taken only a portion of the sacred body, abstain from the chalice; who, without doubt (since they seem bound by I know not what superstition), let them either receive the whole [entire] sacraments, or be kept from the whole. For the division of this mystery is not admitted without grave sacrilege,” etc. These, then, are the fathers of the Church whom Calvin has brought forward for the approval of a condemned dogma: who, although at first sight they seem to favor the recent

—Greeks and the heretics of the new Lutheran sect, yet differ from both by a threefold distinction. For, first, [that] which Gelasius and very many other pontiffs enjoined — [namely] the taking of both portions of the sacrament — upon priests only, these [heretics] will [have] to be commanded to the laity also: [though] the title of his decree, in which priests only are comprehended, resists [this]; and some historians contradict [it], among whom Philip, author of the Supplement of the Chronicle, relates a sanction passed by Gelasius, by which it was provided that priests should neither consecrate the Eucharist under one species only, nor distribute [it] to the people under both species. Secondly, [that] which Chrysostom, Jerome, and certain other pastors of the churches conceded to the people out of indulgence and benign dispensation, these [heretics] have turned into a precept and obligation. Thirdly, [that] which those [fathers] either permitted or conceded before the Church had determined otherwise concerning that matter, these [heretics] — even after synodal and ecumenical prohibitions — so make necessary, that they define and decree, from God’s precept and from necessity of salvation, that both species of the Eucharist are to be taken by all the faithful, and that they sin gravely who take one without the other. Wherefore these heretics were rightly condemned by the Council of Basel, session 30; the Council of Constance, session 13; and lately by the Council of Trent, session 21, canon first, second, and third, in these words:

1. “If anyone shall say that, from God’s precept, or [from] necessity of salvation, all and each of the faithful of Christ ought to take both species of the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist: let him be anathema.

2. “If anyone shall say that the holy catholic Church was not led by just causes and reasons that the laity, and also the clerics not confecting [the sacrament], should communicate under the species of bread only, or [shall say] that she erred in it: let him be anathema.

3. “If anyone shall deny that the whole and entire Christ, the fountain and author of all graces, is taken under the one species of bread — because (as indeed they falsely assert) [Christ] is not, according to his own institution, taken under both species: let him be anathema.”