person desires it. Communion of the sick may take place either along with or apart from the visitation. In either case there must be three, or at least two, in addition to the minister, to communicate with him, except in time of plague or similar contagious illness, when the minister may communicate with the sick person alone. In every case he must receive the Communion himself first, and then administer to the sick person's friends, and to the sick person last. After a special Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, the Order of Holy Communion is to be followed from the words "Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins" onwards. The Church of England at present permits no administration of any reserved Sacrament to the sick nor any further abbreviation of the service.[316] If the sick person is too ill to receive the Communion in the prescribed way, or is otherwise impeded, he is to be instructed that, without doing so with his mouth, he eats and drinks the Body and Blood of Christ to his soul's health if he truly repents of his sins, and steadfastly and thankfully believes in the redemption wrought by Christ's death on the Cross for him. 2. The Prayer Book requires the incumbent of every parish to bring or certify in writing to the bishop all persons within the parish whom he thinks fit to be presented to the bishop for confirmation. No special mode of preparation for that rite is prescribed beyond public instruction in the Catechism (see above, Ch. V. § 9). But this _minimum_ is rightly in the present day not considered sufficient. Special confirmation classes and private interviews with intending confirmees are now almost universal, and form one of the most responsible and important parts of the pastoral duties of the clergy. 3. Besides the ordinary occasions of Confirmation and Sickness, the minister may be called upon to give spiritual advice or comfort to persons whom he knows to be living evil lives or to be at enmity with their neighbours, or who are troubled in conscience about coming to Holy Communion, or generally about their spiritual state. In the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. the Exhortation to be said in giving previous notice of Holy Communion where the people were negligent in coming to it, contained injunctions to reconciliation and charity among neighbours and restitution of wrongs, without which "neither the absolution of the priest can anything avail them nor the receiving of this holy sacrament doth anything but increase their damnation." And it then referred to confession and absolution in these terms:--