Communion of the Sick
Third rubric at the end.
But if a man, either by reason of extremity of sickness, &c.
I think this rubric, in what I conceive to be its true meaning, a precious doctrine, as fully acquitting our church of all Romish superstition, respecting the nature of the Eucharist, in relation to the whole scheme of man’s redemption. But the latter part of it—“he doth eat and drink the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to his soul’s health, although he do not receive the sacrament with his mouth”—seems to me very incautiously expressed, and scarcely to be reconciled with the Church’s own definition of a sacrament in general. For in such a case, where is “the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace given”?184