Commination (Lat., 'threatening'), the 'denouncing of God's anger and judgments against sinners,' read in the Anglican Church on Ash-Wednesday (q.v.). A solemn service, at which penitents were expelled from the church, after instructions and prayers for their amendment, appears to have been held on the first day of Lent from a very early date, perhaps from the beginning of the 6th century; but the commination office used in the Church of England is rather a continuation of the medieval practice of reciting the 'articles of the sentence of cursing,' which were at one time read in the parish churches four times a year; only the opening exhortation to repentance was composed by the English Reformers. The present office is nearly the same as those found in the Sarum and York uses. The curses contained in Deut. xxvii. are read as statements, not as prayers; and the congregation answer 'Amen' to every sentence, as acknowledging the truth of what has been stated, rather than as confirming the curse. The American
Prayer-book omits this office, but several prayers taken from it are appointed to be said on Ash-Wednesday, at the end of the litany.