Into such absurdities was the simple sacrament of the Lord's Supper distorted! When attended with all the pomp and ceremony of splendid altars, lighted tapers, processions, elevations and chantings; offered up by the priests and bishops clad in splendid vestments and in the midst of clouds of incense, accompanied by mystic movements and genuflections of bishops and priests, the church could congratulate itself on having removed the reproach at the first fastened upon the Christians for not having altars and a sacrifice. The mass took away the reproach; and the new converts to Christianity were accustomed to see the same rites and ceremonies employed in this mystical sacrifice of the Son of God as they had seen employed in offering up sacrifices to the pagan deities. In time the idea became prevalent that the body and blood of Messiah were equally and entirely present under each "species"--that is, equally and entirely present in the bread and in the wine; and was equally and entirely given to the faithful which ever they received. This idea, of course, rendered it unnecessary to partake of both bread and wine--hence the practice of communion in one kind. That is, the sacrament was administered by giving bread alone to the communicant. To remark that this was changing the ordinance of the sacrament as instituted by Messiah--suppressing half of it in fact--can scarcely be necessary, since it is so well known that he administered both bread and wine when instituting the sacred ordinance. [27] Thus, through changing the ordinances of the gospel; by misapplying them in some cases, and adding pagan rites to them in others; by dragging into the service of the church the ceremonies employed in heathen temples in the worship of pagan gods; by departing from the moral law of the gospel, until the pages of Christian church history are well nigh as dark in immorality, as cruel and bloody as those that recount the wickedness of pagan Rome; [28] by changing the form and departing from the spirit of government in the church as fixed by Jesus, coupled with the corrupting influence of luxury which came with repose and wealth, together with the destruction visited upon the noblest and best of the servants and saints of God by the pagan persecutions which continued through three centuries--all this, I say, brought to pass the apostasy for which I am contending in these pages--the destruction of the Church of Christ on earth. Footnotes 1. Justin Martyr, First Apology to the Emperor Antoninus Pius. 2. Mosheim. 3. Tertullian's Apology, ch. xiii. 4. Mosheim's Eccl. Hist., vol. I, bk. ii, ch. 4. 5. Historie de Manicheism, tom ii, p. 642. 6. Eccl. Hist. (Mosheim), vol. I, bk. ii, part ii. 7. Nyssen's Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus. 8. I Cor. xii: 8--10.