There are similar cases, in which we find it stated that the penitent was admitted to receive communion among the laity.
[1] The Council of Elvira (c. 300) which reveals to us in many ways the religious life of an entire ecclesiastical province, in canon lxxvi, about a deacon, mentions the same discipline.
There are no grounds for supposing that this transition implied an intermediate stage in which he who was admitted to the communion was deprived of the Eucharist.
This discipline applied not only to those who were guilty of a secret sin, but also to those who had for some time belonged to an heretical sect.
But there was no absolute rule, since the Council of Nicæa (325) received back the Novatian clergy without imposing this penalty on them, while we see it enforced in the case of the Donatists.