(Lat. comminatio), a denunciation of ill; a threatening of punishment or vengeance. In the liturgy of the Church of England, an office appointed to be read on the first day of Lent, or Ash-Wednesday. It is substituted in the room of that godly discipline in the primitive church, by which, as the introduction to the office expresses it, "such persons as stood convicted of notorious sins were put to penance, and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord; and that others, admonished by their example, might be the more afraid to offend." This discipline, in after ages, degenerated in the Church of Rome into a formal confession of sins upon Ash-Wednesday, and the empty ceremony of sprinkling ashes upon the heads of the people. But our reformers rejected the ceremony as mere show and shadow, and substituted in its room this office, which is entitled "A Commination or Denouncing of God's anger and judgment against sinners."

COMMUNION (Lat. comminuere, to reduce into small parts), the crushing, or rather grinding a body into minute particles.