'A comfortable practice of Religion': the Articles of Perth, the Jacobean Church of Scotland, and Communion of the Sick
The Articles of Perth rightly frame the administration of Communion to the sick in terms of "comfort". For the critics of the Articles, however, the practice of 'clinical Communions' could not be countenanced. In his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth, David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), provided a robust response to the rejection of this wise pastoral practice.
Linsday quotes an opponent claiming that administration of the Holy Communion to the sick encouraged trust not in God but the holy Sacrament:
Clinicall Communions haue not onely bred and still doe foster the opinion of absolute necessitie, but also of Opus operatum, of a preposterous confidence in the last voyage victuall, of coldnesse in the publike seruice of God when we are in health, of distrust of our saluation, if wee want it at that time.
This, the opponent claimed, is why Calvin rejected the practice.
Lindsay begins by pointing to Calvin's rather more nuanced and modest view:
Albeit Caluine thinks, that Superstition, Ambition, and vaine glorie, may follow the practice of giuing the Communion to the sicke, yet hee concludes not as yee doe; For in the same Epistle, a little before the wordes which yee cite, hee sayes: Many great and weightie reasons moue mee to thinke, that the Communion ought not to be denyed to the sicke. Hee saw inconueniences might follow thereon, therefore hee addes; Prouidence and discretion would bee vsed in this, that it should bee giuen to none but those that are in extreme danger of their life.
The bishop could also have invoked Bucer's wisdom on the matter. The Reformed liturgy of Strasbourg had retained Communion of the sick. What is more, in his Censura - the review of the 1549 BCP, which shaped Cranmer's 1552 revision - Bucer approved of the provision of a rite for the Communion of the sick. Taken alongside the fact that Calvin was prepared, at least in some contexts, to accept the practice, we can see that the Articles of Perth did not stand apart from a continental Reformed tradition that was broader and more cosmopolitan than the enthusiasts who attacked the Articles.
What, however, of the fear that Communion of the sick encouraged a belief that partaking of the Sacrament before death was somehow necessary to salvation? Lindsay's opponent regarded this as the result of Augustine misreading John 6. Lindsay, by contrast, emphasises that the practice long pre-dates Augustine:
Where yee alleadge Clinicall Communion, to haue bred the opinion of absolute necessitie, before yee said, that it was bred by misse-constructing of the wordes in Iohn 6. by Saint Augustine: yet wee finde this custome of giuing the Communion to the sicke, to haue beene at least two hundred yeares before Saint Augustines time. How proue yee now that the practice bred the opinion? yee coniecture it was so. A good and lawfull custome could no more haue bred it, then the truth of Christs words in Saint Iohn 6. The opinion, certaynly, was bred by some misse-construction, as yee say; and the way to remoue it is neither the deleting the wordes out of the Text, nor the discharging of a lawfull and comfortable practice of Religion, but the right interpretation of the words of our Sauiour, and the clearing of the Churches custome.
A 'comfortable practice of Religion': Lindsay identifies the significance of this Article of Perth. It brings comfort to the Christian in illness and as death approaches. Lindsay's opponent, on the other hand, declares that there are other ways to comfort the sick:
They say, the sicke should not bee left destitute of comfort: This reason arises of the opinion of necessitie, as if there were no other meanes to comfort the sicke, or as if the comfort of the publike Communion endured onely for the present time, and not for the time to come.
Lindsay will have none of it. Yes, there are a variety of ways for the Church's pastors to comfort the sick, but the administration of this holy Sacrament, instituted by our Lord, is 'the most powerful':
The reason arises not of the opinion of necessitie, but of expediency: for albeit there bee other meanes to comfort the sicke, yet why should hee want this, that is one of the most powerfull, and ought to bee iterated as oft as it is expedient, although the comfort once thereby receiued endureth for euer?
Notice Lindsay's confidence in his response: the Sacrament should be administered to the sick "as oft as it is expedient". This "comfortable practice" should not be denied to the sick, but administered to them for their comfort as required. As for Lindsay's claim that the Sacrament is 'the most powerful' means of comfort, how could this not be in light of the teaching of the Scots Confession of 1560:
in the Supper, rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us, that he becomes the very nourishment and food of our souls ... yea, that they are so made flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bones, that as the Eternal Godhead hath given to the flesh of Christ Jesus (which of its own condition and nature was mortal and corruptible) life and immortality, so doth Christ Jesus his flesh and blood eaten and drunken by us, give to us the same prerogatives.
As with the practice of privately baptising infants in sickness or at the point of death, the Articles of Perth in allowing the Communion of the sick offered a vision of what could have been had the reign of Charles I proceeded more wisely. Such pastoral practices could have provided a significant means for the Jacobean Church of Scotland to put down enduring national roots, securing popular support through the "comfortable practice of Religion".
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