Chapter II: The Ordinances Of The Church (4)

The Lord’s Supper, like Baptism, symbolizes fellowship with the
brethren only as consequent upon, and incidental to, fellowship
with Christ. Just as we are all baptized “_into one body_” (_1
Cor. 12:13_) only by being “_baptized into Christ_” (_Rom. 6:3_),
so we commune with other believers in the Lord’s Supper, only as
we commune with Christ. Christ’s words: “_this do in remembrance
of me_” (_1 Cor. 11:24_), bid us think, not of our brethren, but
of the Lord. Baptism is not a test of personal worthiness. Nor is
the Lord’s Supper a test of personal worthiness, either our own or
that of others. It is not primarily an expression of Christian
fellowship. Nowhere in the New Testament is it called a communion
of Christians with one another. But it is called a communion of
the body and blood of Christ (_1 Cor. 10:16_)—or, in other words,
a participation in him. Hence there is not a single cup, but many:
“_divide it among yourselves_” (_Luke 22:17_). Here is warrant for
the individual communion‐cup. Most churches use more than one cup:
if more than one, why not many?

_1 Cor. 11:26_—“_as often as ye eat ... ye proclaim the Lord’s
death_”—the Lord’s Supper is a teaching ordinance, and is to be
observed, not simply for the good that comes to the communicant
and to his brethren, but for the sake of the witness which it
gives to the world that the Christ who died for its sins now lives
for its salvation. A. H. Ballard, in The Standard, Aug. 18, 1900,
on _1 Cor. 11:29_—“_eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself, if
he discern not the body_”—“He who eats and drinks, and does not
discern that he is redeemed by the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once for all, eats and drinks a double condemnation,
because he does not discern the redemption which is symbolized by
the things which he eats and drinks. To turn his thought away from
that sacrificial body to the company of disciples assembled is a
grievous error—the error of all those who exalt the idea of
fellowship or communion in the celebration of the ordinance.”

The offence of a Christian brother, therefore, even if committed
against myself, should not prevent me from remembering Christ and
communing with the Savior. I could not commune at all, if I had to
vouch for the Christian character of all who sat with me. This
does not excuse the church from effort to purge its membership
from unworthy participants; it simply declares that the church’s
failure to do this does not absolve any single member of it from
his obligation to observe the Lord’s Supper. See Jacob, Eccl.
Polity of N. T., 285.

4. Erroneous views of the Lord’s Supper.

A. The Romanist view.

The Romanist view,—that the bread and wine are changed by priestly consecration into the very body and blood of Christ; that this consecration is a new offering of Christ’s sacrifice; and that, by a physical partaking of the elements, the communicant receives saving grace from God. To this doctrine of “transubstantiation” we reply:

(_a_) It rests upon a false interpretation of Scripture. In Mat. 26:26, “this is my body” means: “this is a symbol of my body.” Since Christ was with the disciples in visible form at the institution of the Supper, he could not have intended them to recognize the bread as being his literal body. “The body of Christ is present in the bread, just as it had been in the passover lamb, of which the bread took the place” (John 6:53 contains no reference to the Lord’s Supper, although it describes that spiritual union with Christ which the Supper symbolizes; _cf._ 63. In 1 Cor. 10:16, 17, κοινωίαν τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ is a figurative expression for the spiritual partaking of Christ. In Mark 8:33, we are not to infer that Peter was actually “Satan,” nor does 1 Cor. 12:12 prove that we are all Christs. _Cf._ Gen. 41:26; 1 Cor. 10:4).

_Mat. 26:28_—“_This is my blood ... which is poured out,_” cannot
be meant to be taken literally, since Christ’s blood was not yet
shed. Hence the Douay version (Roman Catholic), without warrant,
changes the tense and reads, “which shall be shed.” At the
institution of the Supper, it is not conceivable that Christ
should hold his body in his own hands, and then break it to the
disciples. There were not two bodies there. Zwingle: “The words of
institution are not the mandatory ‘become’: they are only an
explanation of the sign.” When I point to a picture and say: “This
is George Washington,” I do not mean that the veritable body and
blood of George Washington are before me. So when a teacher points
to a map and says: “This is New York,” or when Jesus refers to
John the Baptist, and says: “_this is Elijah, that is to come_”
(_Mat. 11:14_). Jacob, The Lord’s Supper, Historically
Considered—“It originally marked, not a real presence, but a real
absence, of Christ as the Son of God made man”—that is, a real
absence of his _body_. Therefore the Supper, reminding us of his
body, is to be observed in the church “_till he come_” (_1 Cor.
11:26_).

_John 6:53_—“_Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink
his blood, ye have not life in yourselves_” must be interpreted by
_verse 63_—“_It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh
profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are
spirit, and are life._” _1 Cor. 10:16_—“_The cup of blessing which
we bless, is it not a communion of_ [marg.: ‘_participation in_’]
_the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a
communion of_ [marg. ‘_participation in_’] _the body of
Christ?_”—see Expositor’s Greek Testament, _in loco_; _Mark
8:33_—“_But he turning about, and seeing his disciples, rebuked
Peter, and saith, Get thee behind me, Satan_”; _1 Cor.
12:12_—“_For the body is one, and hath many members, and all the
members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is
Christ._” _cf._ _Gen. 41:26_—“_The seven good kine are seven
years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is
one;_” _1 Cor. 10:4_—“_they drank of a spiritual rock that
followed them: and the rock was Christ._”

Queen Elizabeth: “Christ was the Word that spake it: He took the
bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it, That I believe
and take it.” Yes, we say; but what does the Lord make it? Not his
body, but only a symbol of his body. Sir Thomas More went back to
the doctrine of transubstantiation which the wisdom of his age was
almost unanimous in rejecting. In his Utopia, written to earlier
years, he had made deism the ideal religion. Extreme Romanism was
his reaction from this former extreme. Bread and wine are mere
remembrancers, as were the lamb and bitter herbs at the Passover.
The partaker is spiritually affected by the bread and wine, only
as was the pious Israelite in receiving the paschal symbols; see
Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 25, 42.

E. G. Robinson: “The greatest power in Romanism is its power of
visible representation. Ritualism is only elaborate symbolism. It
is interesting to remember that this prostration of the priest
before the consecrated wafer is no part of even original Roman
Catholicism.” Stanley, Life and Letters, 2:213—“The pope, when he
celebrates the communion, always stands in exactly the opposite
direction [to that of modern ritualists], not with his back but
with his face to the people, no doubt following the primitive
usage.” So in Raphael’s picture of the Miracle of Bolsina, the
priest is at the north end of the table, in the very attitude of a
Protestant clergyman. Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:211—“The
unity of the bread, of which each enjoys a part, represents the
unity of the body of Christ, which consists in the community of
believers. If we are to speak of a presence of the body of Christ
in the Lord’s Supper, that can only be thought of, in the sense of
Paul, as pertaining to the mystical body, _i. e._, the Christian
Community. Augustine and Zwingle, who have expressed most clearly
this meaning of the Supper, have therefore caught quite correctly
the sense of the Apostle.”

Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 40‐53—“The phrase
‘consecration of the elements’ is unwarranted. The leaven and the
mustard seed were in no way consecrated when Jesus pronounced them
symbols of divine things. The bread and wine are not arbitrarily
appointed remembrancers, they are remembrancers in their very
nature. There is no change in them. So every other loaf is a
symbol, as well as that used in the Supper. When St. Patrick held
up the shamrock as the symbol of the Trinity, he meant that every
such sprig was the same. Only the bread of the daily meal is
Christ’s body. Only the washing of dirty feet is the fulfilment of
Christ’s command. The loaf not eaten to satisfy hunger is not
Christ’s symbolic body at all.” Here we must part company with Dr.
Fox. We grant the natural fitness of the elements for which he
contends. But we hold also to a divine appointment of the bread
and wine for a special and sacred use, even as the “_bow in the
cloud_” (_Gen. 9:13_), because it was a natural emblem, was
consecrated to a special religious use.

(_b_) It contradicts the evidence of the senses, as well as of all scientific tests that can be applied. If we cannot trust our senses as to the unchanged material qualities of bread and wine, we cannot trust them when they report to us the words of Christ.

Gibbon was rejoiced at the discovery that, while the real presence
is attested by only a single sense—our sight [as employed in
reading the words of Christ]—the real presence is disproved by
three of our senses, sight, touch, and taste. It is not well to
purchase faith in this dogma at the price of absolute scepticism.
Stanley, on Baptism, in his Christian Institutions, tells us that,
in the third and fourth centuries, the belief that the water of
baptism was changed into the blood of Christ was nearly as firmly
and widely fixed as the belief that the bread and wine of the
communion were changed into his flesh and blood. Döllinger: “When
I am told that I must swear to the truth of these doctrines [of
papal infallibility and apostolic succession], my feeling is just
as if I were asked to swear that two and two make five, and not
four.” Teacher: “Why did Henry VIII quarrel with the pope?”
Scholar: “Because the pope had commanded him to put away his wife
on pain of transubstantiation.” The transubstantiation of Henry
VIII is quite as rational as the transubstantiation of the bread
and wine in the Eucharist.

(_c_) It involves the denial of the completeness of Christ’s past sacrifice, and the assumption that a human priest can repeat or add to the atonement made by Christ once for all (Heb. 9:28—ἅπαξ προσενεχθείς). The Lord’s Supper is never called a sacrifice, nor are altars, priests, or consecrations ever spoken of, in the New Testament. The priests of the old dispensation are expressly contrasted with the ministers of the new. The former “ministered about sacred things,” _i. e._, performed sacred rites and waited at the altar; but the latter “preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:13, 14).

_Heb. 9:28_—“_so Christ also, having been once offered_”—here ἅπαξ
means “once for all,” as in _Jude 3_—“_the faith which was once
for all delivered unto the saints_”; _1 Cor. 9:13, 14_—“_Know ye
not that they that minister about sacred things eat of the things
of the temple, and they that wait upon the altar have their
portion with the altar? Even so did the Lord ordain that they that
proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel._” Romanism
introduces a mediator between the soul and Christ, namely, bread
and wine,—and the priest besides.

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:680‐687 (Syst. Doct., 4: 146‐163)—“Christ
is thought of as at a distance, and as represented only by the
priest who offers anew his sacrifice. But Protestant doctrine
holds to a perfect Christ, applying the benefits of the work which
he long ago and once for all completed upon the cross.”
Chillingworth: “Romanists hold that the validity of every
sacrament but baptism depends upon its administration by a priest;
and without priestly absolution there is no assurance of
forgiveness. But the intention of the priest is essential in
pronouncing absolution, and the intention of the bishop is
essential in consecrating the priest. How can any human being know
that these conditions are fulfilled?” In the New Testament, on the
other hand, Christ appears as the only priest, and each human soul
has direct access to him.

Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 22—“The adherence of the
first Christians to the Mosaic law makes it plain that they did
not hold the doctrine of the modern Church of Rome that the bread
of the Supper is a sacrifice, the table an altar, and the minister
a priest. For the old altar, the old sacrifice, and the old
priesthood still remained, and were still in their view appointed
media of atonement with God. Of course they could not have
believed in two altars, two priesthoods and two contemporaneous
sets of sacrifices.” Christ is the only priest. A. A. Hodge,
Popular Lectures, 257—“The three central dangerous errors of
Romanism and Ritualism are: 1. the perpetuity of the apostolate;
2. the priestly character and offices of Christian ministers; 3.
the sacramental principle, or the depending upon sacraments, as
the essential, initial, and ordinary channels of grace.”
“Hierarchy,” says another, “is an infraction of the divine order;
it imposes the weight of an outworn symbolism on the true
vitalities of the gospel; it is a remnant rent from the shroud of
the dead past, to enwrap the limbs of the living present.”

(_d_) It destroys Christianity by externalizing it. Romanists make all other service a mere appendage to the communion. Physical and magical salvation is not Christianity, but is essential paganism.

Council of Trent, Session VII, On Sacraments in General, Canon IV:
“If any one saith that the sacraments of the New Testament are not
necessary to salvation, but are superfluous, and that without
them, and without the desire thereof, men attain of God, through
faith alone, the grace of justification; though all [the
sacraments] are not indeed necessary for every individual: let him
be anathema.” On Baptism, Canon IV: “If any one saith that the
baptism which is even given by heretics in the name of the Father,
Son and Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the church
doth, is not true baptism, let him be anathema.” Baptism, in the
Romanist system, is necessary to salvation: and baptism, even
though administered by heretics, is an admission to the church.
All baptized persons who, through no fault of their own, but from
lack of knowledge or opportunity, are not connected outwardly with
the true church, though they are apparently attached to some sect,
yet in reality belong _to the soul_ of the true church. Many
belong merely _to the body_ of the Catholic church, and are
counted as its members, but do not belong _to its soul_. So says
Archbishop Lynch, of Toronto; and Pius IX extended the doctrine of
invincible ignorance, so as to cover the case of every dissentient
from the church whose life shows faith working by love.

Adoration of the Host (Latin _hostia_, victim) is a regular part
of the service of the Mass. If the Romanist view were correct that
the bread and wine were actually changed into the body and blood
of Christ, we could not call this worship idolatry. Christ’s body
in the sepulchre could not have been a proper object of worship,
but it was so after his resurrection, when it became animated with
a new and divine life. The Romanist error is that of holding that
the priest has power to transform the elements; the worship of
them follows as a natural consequence, and is none the less
idolatrous for being based upon the false assumption that the
bread and wine are really Christ’s body and blood.

The Roman Catholic system involves many absurdities, but the
central absurdity is that of making religion a matter of machinery
and outward manipulation. Dr. R. S. MacArthur calls sacramentalism
“the pipe‐line conception of grace.” There is no patent Romanist
plumbing. Dean Stanley said that John Henry Newman “made
immortality the consequence of frequent participation of the Holy
Communion.” Even Faber made game of the notion, and declared that
it “degraded celebrations to be so many breadfruit trees.” It is
this transformation of the Lord’s Supper into the Mass that turns
the church into “the Church of the Intonement.” “Cardinal
Gibbons,” it was once said, “makes his own God—the wafer.” His
error is at the root of the super‐sanctity and celibacy of the
Romanist clergy, and President Garrett forgot this when he made
out the pass on his railway for “Cardinal Gibbons and wife.” Dr.
C. H. Parkhurst: “There is no more place for an altar in a
Christian church than there is for a golden calf.” On the word
“priest” in the N. T., see Gardiner, in O. T. Student, Nov.
1889:285‐291; also Bowen, in Theol. Monthly, Nov. 1889:316‐329.
For the Romanist view, see Council of Trent, session XIII, canon
III: _per contra_, see Calvin, Institutes, 2:585‐602; C. Hebert,
The Lord’s Supper: History of Uninspired Teaching.

B. The Lutheran and High Church view.

The Lutheran and High Church view,—that the communicant, in partaking of the consecrated elements, eats the veritable body and drinks the veritable blood of Christ in and with the bread and wine, although the elements themselves do not cease to be material. To this doctrine of “consubstantiation” we object:

(_a_) That the view is not required by Scripture.—All the passages cited in its support may be better interpreted as referring to a partaking of the elements as symbols. If Christ’s body be ubiquitous, as this theory holds, we partake of it at every meal, as really as at the Lord’s Supper.

(_b_) That the view is inseparable from the general sacramental system of which it forms a part.—In imposing physical and material conditions of receiving Christ, it contradicts the doctrine of justification only by faith; changes the ordinance from a sign, into a means, of salvation; involves the necessity of a sacerdotal order for the sake of properly consecrating the elements; and logically tends to the Romanist conclusions of ritualism and idolatry.

(_c_) That it holds each communicant to be a partaker of Christ’s veritable body and blood, whether he be a believer or not,—the result, in the absence of faith, being condemnation instead of salvation. Thus the whole character of the ordinance is changed from a festival occasion to one of mystery and fear, and the whole gospel method of salvation is obscured.

Encyc. Britannica, art.: Luther, 15:81—“Before the peasants’ war,
Luther regarded the sacrament as a secondary matter, compared with
the right view of faith. In alarm at this war and at Carlstadt’s
mysticism, he determined to abide by the tradition of the church,
and to alter as little as possible. He could not accept
transubstantiation, and he sought a _via media_. Occam gave it to
him. According to Occam, matter can be present in two ways, first,
when it occupies a distinct place by itself, excluding every other
body, as two stones mutually exclude each other; and, secondly,
when it occupies the same space as another body at the same time.
Everything which is omnipresent must occupy the same space as
other things, else it could not be ubiquitous. Hence
consubstantiation involved no miracle. Christ’s body was in the
bread and wine naturally, and was not brought into the elements by
the priest. It brought a blessing, not because of Christ’s
presence, but because of God’s promise that this particular
presence of the body of Christ should bring blessings to the
faithful partaker.” Broadus, Am. Com. on Mat., 529—“Luther does
not say how Christ is in the bread and wine, but his followers
have compared his presence to that of heat or magnetism in iron.
But how then could this presence be in the bread and wine
separately?”

For the view here combated, see Gerhard, x: 352—“The bread, apart
from the sacrament instituted by Christ, is not the body of
Christ, and therefore it is ἀρτολατρία (bread‐worship) to adore
the bread in these solemn processions” (of the Roman Catholic
church). 397—“Faith does not belong to the substance of the
Eucharist; hence it is not the faith of him who partakes that
makes the bread a communication of the body of Christ; nor on
account of unbelief in him who partakes does the bread cease to be
a communication of the body of Christ.” See also Sadler, Church
Doctrine, 124‐199; Pusey, Tract No. 90, of the Tractarian Series;
Wilberforce, New Birth; Nevins, Mystical Presence.

_Per contra_, see Calvin, Institutes, 2:525‐584; G. P. Fisher, in
Independent, May 1, 1884—“Calvin differed from Luther, in holding
that Christ is received only by the believer. He differed from
Zwingle, in holding that Christ is truly, though spiritually,
received.” See also E. G. Robinson, in Baptist Quarterly,
1869:85‐109; Rogers, Priests and Sacraments. Consubstantiation
accounts for the doctrine of apostolic succession and for the
universal ritualism of the Lutheran Church. Bowing at the name of
Jesus, however, is not, as has been sometimes maintained, a relic
of the papal worship of the Real Presence, but is rather a
reminiscence of the fourth century, when controversies about the
person of Christ rendered orthodox Christians peculiarly anxious
to recognize Christ’s deity.

“There is no ‘corner’ in divine grace” (C. H. Parkhurst). “All
notions of a needed ‘priesthood,’ to bring us into connection with
Christ, must yield to the truth that Christ is ever with us” (E.
G. Robinson). “The priest was the conservative, the prophet the
progressive. Hence the conflict between them. Episcopalians like
the idea of a priesthood, but do not know what to do with that of
prophet.” Dr. A. J. Gordon: “Ritualism, like eczema in the human
body, is generally a symptom of a low state of the blood. As a
rule, when the church becomes secularized, it becomes ritualized,
while great revivals, pouring through the church, have almost
always burst the liturgical bands and have restored it to the
freedom of the Spirit.”

Puseyism, as defined by Pusey himself, means: “1. high thoughts of
the two sacraments; 2. high estimate of Episcopacy as God’s
ordinance; 3. high estimate of the visible church as the body
wherein we are made and continue to be members of Christ; 4.
regard for ordinances as directing our devotions and disciplining
us, such as daily public prayers, fasts and feasts; 5. regard for
the visible part of devotion, such as the decoration of the house
of God, which acts insensibly on the mind; 6. reverence for and
deference to the ancient church, instead of the reformers, as the
ultimate expounder of the meaning of our church.” Pusey declared
that he and Maurice worshiped different Gods.

5. Prerequisites to Participation in the Lord’s Supper.

A. There are prerequisites.

This we argue from the fact:

(_a_) That Christ enjoined the celebration of the Supper, not upon the world at large, but only upon his disciples; (_b_) that the apostolic injunctions to Christians, to separate themselves from certain of their number, imply a limitation of the Lord’s Supper to a narrower body, even among professed believers; (_c_) that the analogy of Baptism, as belonging only to a specified class of persons, leads us to believe that the same is true of the Lord’s Supper.

The analogy of Baptism to the Lord’s Supper suggests a general
survey of the connections between the two ordinances: 1. Both
ordinances symbolize primarily the death of Christ; then
secondarily our spiritual death to sin because we are one with
him; it being absurd, where there is no such union, to make our
Baptism the symbol of his death. 2. We are merged in Christ first
in Baptism; then in the Supper Christ is more and more taken into
us; Baptism = we in Christ, the Supper = Christ in us. 3. As
regeneration is instantaneous and sanctification continues in
time, so Baptism should be for once, the Lord’s Supper often; the
first single, the second frequent. 4. If one ordinance, the
Supper, requires discernment of the Lord’s body, so does the
other, the ordinance of Baptism; the subject of Baptism should
know the meaning of his act. 5. The order of the ordinances
teaches Christian doctrine, as the ordinances do; to partake of
the Lord’s Supper before being baptized is to say in symbol that
one can be sanctified without being regenerated. 6. Both
ordinances should be public, as both “show forth” the Lord’s death
and are teaching ordinances; no celebration of either one is to be
permitted in private. 7. In both the administrator does not act at
his own option, but is the organ of the church; Philip acts as
organ of the church at Jerusalem when he baptizes the eunuch. 8.
The ordinances stand by themselves, and are not to be made
appendages of other meetings or celebrations; they belong, not to
associations or conventions, but to the local church. 9. The
Lord’s Supper needs scrutiny of the communicant’s qualifications
as much as Baptism; and only the local church is the proper judge
of these qualifications. 10. We may deny the Lord’s Supper to one
whom we know to be a Christian, when he walks disorderly or
disseminates false doctrine, just as we may deny Baptism to such a
person. 11. Fencing the tables, or warning the unqualified not to
partake of the Supper, may, like instruction with regard to
Baptism, best take place before the actual administration of the
ordinance; and the pastor is not a special policeman or detective
to ferret out offences. See Expositor’s Greek Testament on _1 Cor.
10:1‐6_.

B. The prerequisites are those only which are expressly or implicitly laid down by Christ and his apostles.

(_a_) The church, as possessing executive but not legislative power, is charged with the duty, not of framing rules for the administering and guarding of the ordinance, but of discovering and applying the rules given it in the New Testament. No church has a right to establish any terms of communion; it is responsible only for making known the terms established by Christ and his apostles. (_b_) These terms, however, are to be ascertained not only from the injunctions, but also from the precedents, of the New Testament. Since the apostles were inspired, New Testament precedent is the “common law” of the church.

English law consists mainly of precedent, that is, past decisions
of the courts. Immemorial customs may be as binding as are the
formal enactments of a legislature. It is New Testament precedent
that makes obligatory the observance of the first day, instead of
the seventh day, of the week. The common law of the church
consists, however, not of any and all customs, but only of the
customs of the apostolic church interpreted in the light of its
principles, or the customs universally binding because sanctioned
by inspired apostles. Has New Testament precedent the authority of
a divine command? Only so far, we reply, as it is an adequate,
complete and final expression of the divine life in Christ. This
we claim for the ordinances of Baptism and of the Lord’s Supper,
and for the order of these ordinances. See Proceedings of the
Baptist Congress, 1896:23.

The Mennonites, thinking to reproduce even the incidental phases
of N. T. action, have adopted: 1. the washing of feet; 2. the
marriage only of members of the same faith; 3. non‐resistance to
violence; 4. the use of the ban, and the shunning of expelled
persons; 5. refusal to take oaths; 6. the kiss of peace; 7. formal
examination of the spiritual condition of each communicant before
his participation in the Lord’s Supper; 8. the choice of officials
by lot. And they naturally break up into twelve sects, dividing
upon such points as holding all things in common; plainness of
dress, one sect repudiating buttons and using only hooks upon
their clothing, whence their nickname of Hookers; the holding of
services in private houses only; the asserted possession of the
gift of prophecy (A. S. Carman).

C. On examining the New Testament, we find that the prerequisites to participation in the Lord’s Supper are four.

First,—Regeneration.

The Lord’s Supper is the outward expression of a life in the believer, nourished and sustained by the life of Christ. It cannot therefore be partaken of by one who is “dead through ... trespasses and sins.” We give no food to a corpse. The Lord’s Supper was never offered by the apostles to unbelievers. On the contrary, the injunction that each communicant “examine himself” implies that faith which will enable the communicant to “discern the Lord’s body” is a prerequisite to participation.

_1 Cor. 11:27‐29_—“_Wherefore whosoever shall eat the bread or
drink the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty
of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove
himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment unto
himself, if he discern not the Lord’s body._” Schaff, in his
Church History, 2:517, tells us that in the Greek Church, in the
seventh and eighth centuries, the bread was dipped in the wine,
and both elements were delivered in a spoon. See Edwards, on
Qualifications for Full Communion, in Works, 1:81.

Secondly,—Baptism.

In proof that baptism is a prerequisite to the Lord’s Supper, we urge the following considerations:

(_a_) The ordinance of baptism was instituted and administered long before the Supper.

_Mat. 21:25_—“_The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven or
from men?_”—Christ here intimates that John’s baptism had been
instituted by God before his own.

(_b_) The apostles who first celebrated it had, in all probability, been baptized.

_Acts 1:21, 22_—“_Of the men therefore that have companied with us
all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out among us,
beginning from the baptism of John ... of these must one become a
witness with us of his resurrection_”; _19:4_—“_John baptized with
the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should
believe on him that should come after him, that is, on Jesus._”

Several of the apostles were certainly disciples of John. If
Christ was baptized, much more his disciples. Jesus recognized
John’s baptism as obligatory, and it is not probable that he would
take his apostles from among those who had not submitted to it.
John the Baptist himself, the first administrator of baptism, must
have been himself unbaptized. But the twelve could fitly
administer it, because they had themselves received it at John’s
hands. See Arnold, Terms of Communion, 17.

(_c_) The command of Christ fixes the place of baptism as first in order after discipleship.

_Mat. 28:19, 20_—“_Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the
nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I commanded you_”—here the first duty is to make
disciples, the second to baptize, the third to instruct in right
Christian living. Is it said that there is no formal command to
admit only baptized persons to the Lord’s Supper? We reply that
there is no formal command to admit only regenerate persons to
baptism. In both cases, the practice of the apostles and the
general connections of Christian doctrine are sufficient to
determine our duty.

(_d_) All the recorded cases show this to have been the order observed by the first Christians and sanctioned by the apostles.

_Acts 2:41, 46_—“_They then that received his word were
baptized.... And day by day, continuing stedfastly with one accord
in the temple, and breaking bread at home_ [rather, ‘_in various
worship‐rooms_’] _they took their food with gladness and
singleness of heart_”; _8:12_—“_But when they believed Philip ...
they were baptized_”; _10:47, 48_—“_Can any man forbid the water,
that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy
Spirit as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the
name of Jesus Christ_”; _22:16_—“_And now why tarriest thou?
arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on his
name._”

(_e_) The symbolism of the ordinances requires that baptism should precede the Lord’s Supper. The order of the facts signified must be expressed in the order of the ordinances which signify them; else the world is taught that sanctification may take place without regeneration. Birth must come before sustenance—“_nascimur_, _pascimur_.” To enjoy ceremonial privileges, there must be ceremonial qualifications. As none but the circumcised could eat the passover, so before eating with the Christian family must come adoption into the Christian family.

As one must be “_born of the Spirit_” before he can experience the
sustaining influence of Christ, so he must be “_born of water_”
before he can properly be nourished by the Lord’s Supper. Neither
the unborn nor the dead can eat bread or drink wine. Only when
Christ had raised the daughter of the Jewish ruler to life, did he
say: “_Give her to eat_.” The ordinance which symbolizes
regeneration, or the impartation of new life, must precede the
ordinance which symbolizes the strengthening and perfecting of the
life already begun. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, dating
back to the second half of the second century, distinctly declares
(9:5, 10)—“Let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist except those
baptized into the name of the Lord; for as regards this also the
Lord has said: ‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs’.... The
Eucharist shall be given only to the baptized.”

(_f_) The standards of all evangelical denominations, with unimportant exceptions, confirm the view that this is the natural interpretation of the Scripture requirements respecting the order of the ordinances.

“The only protest of note has been made by a portion of the
English Baptists.” To these should be added the comparatively
small body of the Free Will Baptists in America. Pedobaptist
churches in general refuse full membership, office‐holding, and
the ministry, to unbaptized persons. The Presbyterian church does
not admit to the communion members of the Society of Friends. Not
one of the great evangelical denominations accepts Robert Hall’s
maxim that the only terms of communion are terms of salvation. If
individual ministers announce this principle and conform their
practice to it, it is only because they transgress the standards
of the churches to which they belong.

See Tyerman’s Oxford Methodists, preface, page vi—“Even in
Georgia, Wesley excluded dissenters from the Holy Communion, on
the ground that they had not been properly baptized; and he would
himself baptize only by immersion, unless the child or person was
in a weak state of health.” Baptist Noel gave it as his reason for
submitting to baptism, that to approach the Lord’s Supper
conscious of not being baptized would be to act contrary to all
the precedents of Scripture. See Curtis, Progress of Baptist
Principles, 304.

The dismission of Jonathan Edwards from his church at Northampton
was due to his opposing the Halfway Covenant, which admitted
unregenerate persons to the Lord’s Supper as a step on the road to
spiritual life. He objected to the doctrine that the Lord’s Supper
was “a converting ordinance.” But these very unregenerated persons
had been baptized, and he himself had baptized many of them. He
should have objected to infant baptism, as well as to the Lord’s
Supper, in the case of the unregenerate.

(_g_) The practical results of the opposite view are convincing proof that the order here insisted on is the order of nature as well as of Scripture. The admission of unbaptized persons to the communion tends always to, and has frequently resulted in, the disuse of baptism itself, the obscuring of the truth which it symbolizes, the transformation of Scripturally constituted churches into bodies organized after methods of human invention, and the complete destruction of both church and ordinances as Christ originally constituted them.

Arnold, Terms of Communion, 76—The steps of departure from
Scriptural precedent have not unfrequently been the following: (1)
administration of baptism on a weekday evening, to avoid giving
offence; (2) reception, without baptism, of persons renouncing
belief in the baptism of their infancy; (3) giving up of the
Lord’s Supper as non‐essential,—to be observed or not observed by
each individual, according as he finds it useful; (4) choice of a
pastor who will not advocate Baptist views; (5) adoption of
Congregational articles of faith; (6) discipline and exclusion of
members for propagating Baptist doctrine. John Bunyan’s church,
once either an open communion church or a mixed church both of
baptized and unbaptized believers, is now a regular Congregational
body. Armitage, History of the Baptists, 482 _sq._, claims that it
was originally a Baptist church. Vedder, however, in Bap. Quar.
Rev., 1886:289, says that “The church at Bedford is proved by
indisputable documentary evidence never to have been a Baptist
church in any strict sense.” The results of the principle of open
communion are certainly seen in the Regent’s Park church in
London, where some of the deacons have never been baptized. The
doctrine that baptism is not essential to church membership is
simply the logical result of the previous practice of admitting
unbaptized persons to the communion table. If they are admitted to
the Lord’s Supper, then there is no bar to their admission to the
church. See Proceedings of the Baptist Congress, Boston, November,
1902; Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 296‐298.

Thirdly,—Church membership.

(_a_) The Lord’s Supper is a church ordinance, observed by churches of Christ as such. For this reason, membership in the church naturally precedes communion. Since communion is a family rite, the participant should first be a member of the family.

_Acts 2:46 47_—“_breaking bread at home_ [rather, ‘_in various
worship‐rooms_’]” (see Com. of Meyer); _20:7_—“_upon the first day
of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread_”; _1
Cor. 11:18, 22_—“_when ye come together in the church ... have ye
not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of
God, and put them to shame that have not?_”

(_b_) The Lord’s Supper is a symbol of church fellowship. Excommunication implies nothing, if it does not imply exclusion from the communion. If the Supper is simply communion of the individual with Christ, then the church has no right to exclude any from it.

_1 Cor. 10:17_—“_we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we
all partake of the one bread._” Though the Lord’s Supper primarily
symbolizes fellowship with Christ, it symbolizes secondarily
fellowship with the church of Christ. Not all believers in Christ
were present at the first celebration of the Supper, but only
those organized into a body—the apostles. I can invite proper
persons to my tea‐table, but that does not give them the right to
come uninvited. Each church, therefore, should invite visiting
members of sister churches to partake with it. The Lord’s Supper
is an ordinance by itself, and should not be celebrated at
conventions and associations, simply to lend dignity to something
else.

The Panpresbyterian Council at Philadelphia, in 1880, refused to
observe the Lord’s Supper together, upon the ground that the
Supper is a church ordinance, to be observed only by those who are
amenable to the discipline of the body, and therefore not to be
observed by separate church organizations acting together.
Substantially upon this ground, the Old School General Assembly
long before, being invited to unite at the Lord’s table with the
New School body with whom they had dissolved ecclesiastical
relations, declined to do so. See Curtis, Progress of Baptist
Principles, 304; Arnold, Terms of Communion, 36.

Fourthly,—An orderly walk.

Disorderly walking designates a course of life in a church member which is contrary to the precepts of the gospel. It is a bar to participation in the Lord’s Supper, the sign of church fellowship. With Arnold, we may class disorderly walking under four heads:—

(_a_) Immoral conduct.

_1 Cor. 5:1‐13_—Paul commands the Corinthian church to exclude the
incestuous person: “_I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no
company with fornicators;... but now I write unto you not to keep
company, if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator, or
covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or __ an
extortioner; with such a one no, not to eat.... Put away the
wicked man from among yourselves._”—Here it is evident that the
most serious forms of disorderly walking require exclusion not
only from church fellowship but from Christian fellowship as well.

(_b_) Disobedience to the commands of Christ.

_1 Cor. 14:37_—“_If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet, or
spiritual, let him take knowledge of the things which I write unto
you, that they are the commandments of the Lord_”; _2 Thess. 3:6,
11, 15_—“_Now we command you, brethren,... that ye withdraw
yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not
after the tradition which they received of us... For we hear of
some that walk among you disorderly, that work not at all, but are
busybodies.... And if any man obeyeth not our word by this
epistle, note that man, that ye have no company with him, to the
end that he may be ashamed. And yet count him not as an enemy, but
admonish him as a brother._”—Here is exclusion from church
fellowship, and from the Lord’s Supper its sign, while yet the
offender is not excluded from Christian fellowship, but is still
counted “_a brother_.” _Versus_ G. B. Stevens, in N. Englander,
1887:40‐47.

In these passages Paul intimates that “not to walk after the
tradition received from him, not to obey the word contained in his
epistles, is the same as disobedience to the commands of Christ,
and as such involves the forfeiture of church fellowship and its
privileged tokens” (Arnold, Prerequisites to Communion, 68). Since
Baptism is a command of Christ, it follows that we cannot properly
commune with the unbaptized. To admit such to the Lord’s Supper is
to give the symbol of church fellowship to those who, in spite of
the fact that they are Christian brethren, are, though perhaps
unconsciously, violating the fundamental law of the church. To
withhold protest against plain disobedience to Christ’s commands
is to that extent to countenance such disobedience. The same
disobedience which in the church member we should denominate
disorderly walking must _a fortiori_ destroy all right to the
Lord’s Supper on the part of those who are not members of the
church.

(_c_) Heresy, or the holding and teaching of false doctrine.

_Titus 3:10_—“_A man that is heretical_ [Am. Revisers: ‘_a
factious man_’] _after a first and second admonition refuse_”; see
Ellicott, Com., _in loco_: “αἱρετικὸς ἄνθρωπος = one who gives
rise to divisions by erroneous teaching, not necessarily of a
fundamentally heterodox nature, but of the kind just described in
_verse 9_.” _Cf._ _Acts 20:30_—“_from among your own selves shall
men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples
after them_”; _1 John 4:2, 3_—“_Hereby know ye the Spirit of God:
every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not
of God: and this is the spirit of the antichrist._” B. B.
Bosworth: “Heresy, in the N. T., does not necessarily mean the
holding of erroneous opinions,—it may also mean the holding of
correct opinions in an unbrotherly or divisive spirit.” We grant
that the word “_heretical_” may also mean “_factious_”; but we
claim that false doctrine is the chief source of division, and is
therefore in itself a disqualification for participation in the
Lord’s Supper. Factiousness is an additional bar, and we treat it
under the next head of Schism.

The Panpresbyterian Council, mentioned above, refused to admit to
their body the Cumberland Presbyterians, because, though the
latter adhere to the Presbyterian form of church government, they
are Arminian in their views of the doctrines of grace. As we have
seen, on pages 940‐942, that Baptism is a confession of
evangelical faith, so here we see that the Lord’s Supper also is a
confession of evangelical faith, and that no one can properly
participate in it who denies the doctrines of sin, of the deity,
incarnation and atonement of Christ, and of justification by
faith, which the Lord’s Supper symbolizes. Such denial should
exclude from all Christian fellowship as well.

There is heresy which involves exclusion only from church
fellowship. Since pedobaptists hold and propagate false doctrine
with regard to the church and its ordinances—doctrines which
endanger the spirituality of the church, the sufficiency of the
Scriptures, and the lordship of Christ—we cannot properly admit
them to the Lord’s Supper. To admit them or to partake with them,
would be to treat falsehood as if it were truth. Arnold,
Prerequisites to Communion, 72—“Pedobaptists are guilty of
teaching that the baptized are not members of the church, or that
membership in the church is not voluntary; that there are two
sorts of baptism, one of which is a profession of faith of the
person baptized, and the other is profession of faith of another
person; that regeneration is given in and by baptism, or that the
church is composed in great part of persons who do not give, and
were never supposed to give, any evidence of regeneration; that
the church has a right to change essentially one of Christ’s
institutions, or that it is unessential whether it be observed as
he ordained it or in some other manner; that baptism may be
rightfully administered in a way which makes much of the language
in which it is described in the Scriptures wholly unsuitable and
inapplicable, and which does not at all represent the facts and
doctrines which baptism is declared in the Scriptures to
represent; that the Scriptures are not in all religious matters
the sufficient and only binding rule of faith and practice.”

(_d_) Schism, or the promotion of division and dissension in the church.—This also requires exclusion from church fellowship, and from the Lord’s Supper which is its appointed sign.

_Rom. 16:17_—“_Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them that are
causing the divisions and occasions of stumbling contrary to the
doctrine which ye learned: and turn away from them._” Since
pedobaptists, by their teaching and practice, draw many away from
Scripturally constituted churches,—thus dividing true believers
from each other and weakening the bodies organized after the model
of the New Testament,—it is imperative upon us to separate
ourselves from them, so far as regards that communion at the
Lord’s table which is the sign of church fellowship. Mr. Spurgeon
admits pedobaptists to commune with his church “for two or three
months.” Then they are kindly asked whether they are pleased with
the church, its preaching, doctrine, form of government, _etc._ If
they say they are pleased, they are asked if they are not disposed
to be baptized and become members? If so inclined, all is well;
but if not, they are kindly told that it is not desirable for them
to commune longer. Thus baptism is held to precede church
membership and permanent communion, although temporary communion
is permitted without it.

Arnold, Prerequisites to Communion, 80—“It may perhaps be objected
that the passages cited under the four preceding subdivisions
refer to church fellowship in a general way, without any specific
reference to the Lord’s Supper. In reply to this objection, I
would answer, in the first place, that having endeavored
previously to establish the position that the Lord’s Supper is an
ordinance to be celebrated in the church, and expressive of church
fellowship, I felt at liberty to use the passages that enjoin the
withdrawal of that fellowship as constructively enjoining
exclusion from the Communion, which is its chief token. I answer,
secondly, that the principle here assumed seems to me to pervade
the Scriptural teachings so thoroughly that it is next to
impossible to lay down _any_ Scriptural terms of communion at the
Lord’s table, except upon the admission that the ordinance is
inseparably connected with church fellowship. To treat the subject
otherwise, would be, as it appears to me, a violent putting
asunder of what the Lord has joined together. The objection
suggests an additional argument in favor of our position that the
Lord’s Supper is a _church_ ordinance.” “Who Christ’s body doth
divide, Wounds afresh the Crucified; Who Christ’s people doth
perplex, Weakens faith and comfort wrecks; Who Christ’s order doth
not see, Works in vain for unity; Who Christ’s word doth take for
guide, With the Bridegroom loves the Bride.”

D. The local church is the judge whether these prerequisites are fulfilled.

The local church is the judge whether these prerequisites are fulfilled in the case of persons desiring to partake of the Lord’s Supper.—This is evident from the following considerations:

(_a_) The command to observe the ordinance was given, not to individuals, but to a company.

(_b_) Obedience to this command is not an individual act, but is the joint act of many.

(_c_) The regular observance of the Lord’s Supper cannot be secured, nor the qualifications of persons desiring to participate in it be scrutinized, unless some distinct organized body is charged with this responsibility.

(_d_) The only organized body known to the New Testament is the local church, and this is the only body, of any sort, competent to have charge of the ordinances. The invisible church has no officers.

(_e_) The New Testament accounts indicate that the Lord’s Supper was observed only at regular appointed meetings of local churches, and was observed by these churches as regularly organized bodies.

(_f_) Since the duty of examining the qualifications of candidates for baptism and for membership is vested in the local church and is essential to its distinct existence, the analogy of the ordinances would lead us to believe that the scrutiny of qualifications for participation in the Lord’s Supper rests with the same body.

(_g_) This care that only proper persons are admitted to the ordinances should be shown, not by open or forcible debarring of the unworthy at the time of the celebration, but by previous public instruction of the congregation, and, if needful in the case of persistent offenders, by subsequent private and friendly admonition.

“What is everybody’s business is nobody’s business.” If there be
any power of effective scrutiny, it must be lodged in the local
church. The minister is not to administer the ordinance of the
Lord’s Supper at his own option, any more than the ordinance of
Baptism. He is simply the organ of the church. He is to follow the
rules of the church as to invitations and as to the mode of
celebrating the ordinance, of course instructing the church as to
the order of the New Testament. In the case of sick members who
desire to communicate, brethren may be deputed to hold a special
meeting of the church at the private house or sick room, and then
only may the pastor officiate. If an invitation to the Communion
is given, it may well be in the following form: “Members in good
standing of other churches of like faith and practice are
cordially invited to partake with us.” But since the comity of
Baptist churches is universally acknowledged, and since Baptist
views with regard to the ordinances are so generally understood,
it should be taken for granted that all proper persons will be
welcome even if no invitation of any sort is given.

Mr. Spurgeon, as we have seen, permitted unbaptized persons
temporarily to partake of the Lord’s Supper unchallenged, but if
there appeared a disposition to make participation habitual, one
of the deacons in a private interview explained Baptist doctrine
and urged the duty of baptism. If this advice was not taken,
participation in the Lord’s Supper naturally ceased. Dr. P. S.
Henson proposes a middle path between open and close communion, as
follows: “Preach and urge faith in Jesus and obedience to him.
Leave choice with participants themselves. It is not wise to set
up a judgment‐seat at the Lord’s table. Always preach the
Scriptural order—1. Faith in Jesus; 2. Obedience in Baptism; 2.
Observance of the Lord’s Supper.” J. B. Thomas: “Objections to
strict communion come with an ill grace from pedobaptists who
withhold communion from their own baptized, whom they have
forcibly made quasi‐members in spite of the only protest they are
capable of offering, and whom they have retained as subjects of
discipline without their consent.”