Wednesday 14 June 2023

Luckock on Communion in Both Kinds

Clearing out books, I read a few pages of Herbert Mortimer Luckock's The Divine Liturgy: Being the Order for Holy Communion Historically, Doctrinally, and Devotionally set forth in Fifty Portion (London: Rivingtons, 1889). Given his Catholic stance, he seemed worth noting his comments on the doctrine of concomitance (pages 340-341, footnotes removed) to add to earlier posts Against Withholding the Cup and A History of Withholding the Cup:

It has been sought to justify Communion in one kind by the doctrine of concomitance, which implies that "whole Christ is present after consecration under either species of bread or wine." The Eastern Church, though opposed entirely to the denial of the Cup to the laity, has sanctioned the principle of concomitance by its administration of Wine alone in infant Communion.

Without entering upon a subject, which has been largely debated, it must suffice to plead the example of Christ; what He gave could not but have a virtue of its own. Through the refusal of the Cup therefore, the laity are deprived of their rights, and even the doctors of the Council of Trent indirectly admitted it; for they dared not to deny that those who received in one kind only were deprived of any grace, but they limited the loss to any grace that was necessary for salvation.

While then it is our bounden duty to take every precaution against any accident which may lead to even the least irreverence, nothing can justify our withholding that which Christ Himself gave at the institution of the Feast, or which He designated as of such vital import when he said, "Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you. He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood, dwelleth in Me and I in him."