The Council of Trent (Session 21; Canon I, 20) states: " If anyone saith that the Holy Catholic Church was not induced by just cause and reason to communicate under the species of bread only, laymen and also clerics when not consecrating, let him be anathema."
In withholding the cup, said by Romanists to contain the very blood of the Lord, they withhold what is, according to them, essential for salvation.
Dr. Wylie testifies to what he has seen repeatedly: " The practice has now come to be extremely common in the Church of Rome for the priest ALONE to partake sacramentally; so that, in point of fact, the people are debarred from BOTH kinds. The writer has seen mass celebrated in most of the great cathedrals out of Italy, but in no instance did he ever see the worshippers permitted to partake " (The Papacy, pp. 323, 324).
Does it not show that the Romanists do not believe in their own dogmas, for if the words they quote in support of the mass, that without eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man, there is no Divine life whatsosever, are correctly used by them, then to withhold the bread and wine at the Lord's Supper, turned, as they falsely claim, into the body and blood of the Lord, would mean that they heartlessly place their adherents clean outside the pale of salvation altogether.
We can thank God that Rome's anathema is thunder without lightning. It can affright but it cannot kill. Bunyan, in his wonderful Pilgrim's Progress, aptly described the situation. Giant Pope could make horrible grimaces, but had no further power.