compelled, but makes a voluntary collation. This is our bank for piety. For it is not expended in feasting and drinking, and abusive excesses, but in feeding and burying the poor, in providing for orphans that are bereft of their parents, and aged people, and such as suffer shipwreck, or languish in the mines, or in banishment, or in prison. Only one part of it," he adds, " was spent upon a sober feast of charity, where the poor had a right to feed as well as the rich." St. Cyprian also speaks of this,' when he asks a rich woman," how she could think she celebrated the Lord's supper, who had no respect to the corban; or how she could come into the Lord's house without a sacrifice, and eat part of the sacrifice, which the poor had offered?" Parallel to which is that of St. Austin," that a man of ability ought to be ashamed to communicate of another man's oblation;" and therefore he exhorts every one to bring their own oblations to be consecrated at the altar.

SECT. 2.-What Persons were allowed to make them, and what not.

There was a very near alliance and great affinity between these oblations, and that of the eucharist; and therefore as they had the same common name of oblation and sacrifice, so in many respects the same rules were observed about them. As first, that none but actual communicants should have the privilege to offer them. For in those days it was a privilege to be allowed to make their oblations, and a sort of lesser excommunication to be debarred from it. They would not receive the oblations of persons that were at enmity or variance with their brethren, neither at the altar, nor into the treasury. And this, as Optatus tells us, was grounded upon that rule of our Saviour, that no men's gifts

Cypr. de Opere et Eleemos. p. 203. Locuples et dives es, et dominicum celebrare te credis, quæ corbonam omninò non respicis; quæ in Dominicum sine sacrificio venis; quæ partem de sacrificio, quod pauper obtulit, sumis? 9 Aug. Ser. 215. de Tempore. Oblationes, quæ in altario consecrentur, offerte: erubescere debet homo idoneus, si de alienâ oblatione communicaverit. * Con. Carthag. iv. can. 93. Oblationes dissidentium fratrum, neque in sacrario, neque in gazophylacio recipiantur. ♦ Optat. lib. vi. p. 93. Altaria, in quibus fraternitatis munera non jussit salvator poni, nisi quæ essent de pace condita.

He

should be offered at the altar, but those that were seasoned with peace and reconciliation with their brethren. “If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Matth. v. 23. For the same reason they refused the oblations of noted and known oppressors of the poor, as appears from another canon of the Council of Carthage. With which agrees the rule in the Constitutions, that they should not receive the gifts of a thief or an harlot. Which is repeated again with an addition of many other such like criminals. A bishop must know, whose gifts he ought to receive, and whose not. shall not receive the gifts of fraudulent hucksters, káwŋdoi: "for an huckster shall not be freed from sin." Eccles. xxvi. 29. And Esaias speaks of these, when he upbraids Israel, saying, "thy hucksters mix wine with water," so the Septuagint reads it. Esa. i. 22. Neither shall he receive the oblations of whore-mongers. "For thou shalt not offer to the Lord the hire of a whore." Deut. xxiii. 18. Nor the oblations of covetous and adulterers: for the sacrifices of such are abomination to the Lord. Nor the oblations of such as afflict the widow, and oppress the fatherless by their power, and fill the prisons with innocent persons, and evil intreat their servants with stripes, famine, and hard bondage; and lay waste whole cities: all such are to be rejected, and their offerings are abominable. He shall also refuse all corrupters, and lawyers that plead for injustice, and makers of idols and thieves, and unrighteous publicans, and those that use frauds in weight or measure; all soldiers that are false accusers, and not content with their wages, but oppress the poor; all murderers and hangmen, and unrighteous judges, drunkards, blasphemers, and abusers of themselves with mankind; all usurers, and in a word every wicked man, that lives in rebellion against the will of God. St. Chrysostom particularly inveighing against oppressors,

3 Id.

1 Con. Carth. iv. can. 94. Eorum qui pauperes opprimunt, dona à sacerdotibus refutanda. Constit. lib. iii. cap. 8. lib. iv. cap. 6.

who offered alms out of what they had violently taken from others, says elegantly," that God will not have his altar covered with tears: Christ will not be fed with robbery; such sort of sustenance is most ungrateful to Him: it is an affront to the Lord, to offer unclean things to Him: He had rather be neglected and perish by famine, in his poor members, than live by such oblations. The one indeed is cruelty, but the other is both cruelty and an affront. It is better to give nothing, than to give that which is the property of others." What the Author of the Constitutions observes of idol-makers, is confirmed by Tertullian, who wrote his whole book of idolatry in a manner against them, where among many other things, he says, they, that followed that trade, were not to be ad:nitted into the house of God. And it is very remarkable what St. Ambrose told Valentinian, when he was about to restore the heathen altars at the intercession of Symmachus, that if he so far contributed toward the re-settlement of idolatry, the Church would no longer receive his oblations: "what will you answer," says he,3" to the priest, when he shall say unto you, the Church requires not your gifts, because you have adorned the temples of the heathen with your gifts. The altar of Christ refuses your oblations, because you have erected an altar to the idol-gods." By which it is plain, they rejected the oblations not only of professed idolaters, but all such as were abetters of them, or any ways instrumental in giving aid or encouragement to idolatrous practices. Again, it was a standing rule among them not to admit the oblations of those, who having a right to communicate, would not stay to participate of the communion. This is expressly ordered by the Council of Eliberis: and the rule extended further to all those that for any

'Chrys. Hom. lxxxvi. al. 87. in Mat. p. 722. Vid. Hom. lxxii. in Joan. p. 466. Et Epiphan. Exposit. Fidei. n. 23.

Tertul. de Idololat. cap. v. Respondebimus ad excusationes hujusmodi artificum, quos nunquam in domum Dei admitti oportet, si quis eam disciplinam norit. 9 Ambros. Ep. xxx. ad Valent. Quid respondebis sacerdoti dicenti tibi: munera tua non quærit ecclesia, quia templa Gentilium muneribus ornâsti. Ara Christi dona tua respuit, quia aram simulacris fecisti.

Con. Eliber. can. xxviii. Episcopos ab eo placuit, qui non communicat, munera accipere non debere.

crime or heresy were excluded from communion by the discipline of the Church, or were not in full communion with her. Such as all excommunicate persons, all catechumens, penitents, energumens, and strangers that travelled without commendatory letters, and such of the clergy as for some lesser offences were reduced to the communion of strangers. For, as Albaspinæus notes rightly upon that canon, all these were in some measure non-communicants, as not being in the perfect and full communion of the Church. The energumens are particularly specified in the next canon of that Council,' as persons, whose oblations should not be received, nor their names mentioned at the altar, whilst they were actually under the agitation of an evil spirit. And all penitents, whilst they were under discipline, were in the same class; only they had this privilege, that if they chanced to die suddenly, whilst they were doing penance, and were desirous to be reconciled, by some canons their oblations were allowed to be received after death, as a testimony of their reconciliation and admission into the communion of the Church again: except they were of that sort of penitents, to whom the Church thought fit, in the severity of her discipline, to deny all external communion at the hour of death; of which there are many instances in the Councils of Sardica, Eliberis, and others: for then their oblations were not received either living or dying or else when they had been so careless as not to desire reconciliation at the hour of death: in which case, as Pope Leo says,3 "their cause was reserved to the judgment of God, in whose hand it was that their life was not prolonged till they could have the remedy of communion." As to the Church," she did not communicate with those after death, with whom she did not commu

Con. Eliber. can. xxix. Energumenus, qui erratico spiritu exagitatur, hujus nomen neque ad altare cum oblatione recitandum, neque permittendum ut suâ manu in ecclesià ministret.

2 Con. Arelatense i. can. xii. Vasense i. can. ii. Tolet. ii. can. xii. Leo Ep. xcii. ad. Rusticum cap. 6 Horum causa Dei judicio reservauda est, in cujus manu fuit, ut talium obitus non usque ad communionis remedium differretur. Nos autem, quibus viventibus non communicavimus, mortuis communicare non possumus.

nicate, when they were alive." Nay, sometimes they would not receive the oblations of those, that died in their communion, if their last act happened to have any thing irregular in it. As appears from a case in Cyprian, who tells us, that it had been determined by an African synod, that no one should appoint any of God's ministers a curator or guardian by his will, because they were to give themselves to supplications and prayer, and to attend only upon the sacrifice and service of the altar: and therefore, when one Geminius Victor had made Geminius Faustinus, a presbyter of the Church of Furni, guardian or trustee by his last will and testament, Cyprian wrote to the Church of Furni, that they should make no oblation for him, nor name him in the sacrifice of the altar. But in after ages this piece of discipline was a little moderated in France: for by a canon of the second Council of Orleans it was ordered," that, if any one died in the communion of the Church, his oblation should be received, though he happened to be slain in some fault, provided he had not laid violent hands upon himself.” But this privilege was not allowed the catechumens, that died without baptism, because they never were perfectly in the communion of the Church. Therefore Chrysostom says, no mention was ever made of them after death in the prayers of the Church, as was usual for believers, in the oblation or sacrifice of the altar. The only thing, that could be done for such, was to give private alms to the poor. If they had not the benefit of baptism, they were to be buried as persons who laid violent hands upon themselves, or fell by the arm of justice, without any solemnity of

'Cypr. Ep. lxvi. al. i. ad Cler. Furnitan. p. 3. Ideò Victor cùm contra formam nuper in Concilio à sacerdotibus datam, Geninium Faustinum presbyterum ausus sit tutorem constituere, non est quod pro dormitione ejus apud vos fiat oblatio, aut deprecatio aliqua nomine ejus in ecclesiâ frequentetur.

* Con. Aurelian. ii. can. xiv. Oblationem defunctorum, qui in aliquo crimine fuerint interempti, recipi debere censemus, si tamen non ipsi sibi mortem probentur propriis manibus intulisse. * Chrys. Hom.

iii. in Philip. p. 1225. Vid. Hom. i. in Act. et Hom. xxiv. in Joan. * Con. Bracar. i. can. xxxv. Catechumenis sine redemptione baptismi defunctis, simili modo, non oblationis sanctæ commemoratio, neque psallendi impendatur officium.