VII.
The Bread of the Sacrament ought to be administred to those which cannot drink Wine, in making protestation that 'tis not through contempt, and doing what they can possible towards it, by putting the Cup as near their Mouth as they possible can, to avoid giving any manner of Offence.
This is a wise and charitable condescendence towards an insurmountable weakness of Nature; it was by this Principle the Antient Church gave the Sacrament mixt and soaked, to those who lay at the point of Death, * 1.1 so it was practis'd in the Third Century towards a certain Old Man called Serapion, who was a dying Penitent, for a Priest of Alexandria, sent by a Young Man, a little, or a Portion of the Sacrament, commanding it should be steept, and put in the Old Mans mouth that he might swallow it down; but this was not done, but in case of great necessity; as Hugh Maynard a Learned Bene∣dict in observes in his Notes on the Book of Sacraments of Gregory the First. The same favour was used towards Young Infants in the times as they were admitted to the participation of the Sacraments; and not that only, but Pope Paschal who succeeded Ʋrban the Second, in the year 1099 commanded that the Two Symbols should be distributed apart, except 'twere to little Children, and to such as are extream sick, for to such he permits that they might be communicated with the Wine only,