Section 50.  The Conclusion.

Thirdly, Why did our Savior say of the bread simply, “Take, eat,” and of the cup, “drink ye all of it;” as if he had purposely intended to provide against the wile of Satan? Fourthly, If, as they will have it, the Lord honored priests only with his Supper, what man would ever have dared to call strangers, whom the Lord had excluded, to partake of it, and to partake of a gift which he had not in his power, without any command from him who alone could give it? Nay, what presumption do they show in the present day in distributing the symbol of Christ’s body to the common people, if they have no command or example from the Lord? Fifthly, Did Paul lie when he said to the Corinthians, “I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you?” (1 Cor. 11:23). The thing delivered, he afterwards declares to be, that all should communicate promiscuously in both symbols. But if Paul received of the Lord that all were to be admitted without distinction, let those who drive away almost the whole people of God see from whom they have received, since they cannot now pretend to have their authority from God, with whom there is not “yea and nay” (2 Cor. 1:19, 20). And yet these abominations they dare to cloak with the name of the Church, and defend under this pretence, as if those Antichrists were the Church who so licentiously trample under foot, waste, and abrogate the doctrine and institutions of Christ, or as if the Apostolic Church, in which religion flourished in full vigor, were not the Church.

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Communion