Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/242

 Exhortation may be left unsaid. And to the same purpose it is afterwards said, "when the Holy Communion is celebrated on the work-day, or in private houses, then may be omitted the Gloria in Excelsis, the Creed, the Homily and the Exhortation." Fol. 132.

Next after that we quoted first, this Rubric immediately follows; "And if upon the Sunday or Holy-day, the people be negligent to come to the Communion, then shall the Priest earnestly exhort his parishioners to dispose themselves to the receiving of the Holy Communion more diligently, saying," &c. Which shews, that upon all Sundays and Holy-days people then generally received; the Church expected and required it of them. And if any Minister found that his parishioners did not always come, at least upon those days, he was to exhort and admonish them to dispose themselves more diligently for it; and that by the command of the Church itself; whereby she hath sufficiently declared her will and desire, that all her members should receive the Communion as they did in the Primitive times, every day in the week if possible; and if that could not be, yet at least every Sunday and Holy-day in the year.

In the Rubric after the Communion Service, there are several things to the same purpose; for it is there ordered, that upon Wednesdays and Fridays, although there be none to communicate, the Priest shall say all things at the Altar appointed to be said at the celebration of the Lord's Supper, until after the Offertory. And then it follows: "And the same order shall be used whensoever the people be customably assembled to pray in the Church, and none disposed to communicate with the Priest." Fol. 130. Whereby we are given to understand, that upon what day soever people came to Church, the Priest was to be ready to celebrate the Holy Sacrament if any were disposed to communicate with him. And if there were none, he was to shew his readiness, by reading a considerable part of the Communion Service.

There is another Rubric in the same place, that makes it still plainer. Which I shall transcribe, because the book is not commonly to be had; neither can it be expressed better than in its words, which are these: "Also, that the receiving of the Sacrament of the Blessed Body and Blood of, may be most agreeable to the Institution thereof, and to the usage of the Primitive Church, in all Cathedral and Collegiate Churches there