_Mr. M._ He writes somewhat in this way: As to the mode, I believe it to
be unessential; for it seems to me contrary to the genius of
Christianity to make a particular form of doing a thing essential to the
thing. What else is there in Christianity, if we are to except baptism,
in which modes are regarded or made essential? It is not so, he says,
with the Lord's Supper, surely; the upper room, night, sitting or
reclining, unleavened bread, a particular kind of wine, and all such
things, are not regarded by any as necessary to the ordinance. It is
very interesting, he says, to notice, that, whereas the old dispensation
prescribed the mode of every religious act, minutely, and a departure
from it vitiated the act itself, Christianity threw off everything like
prescriptive modes altogether. Considering the attachment of the human
mind to forms and ceremonies, he knows of nothing in which Christianity
shows its divine origin and supernatural power more, than in its sublime
triumph, so immediately, in the minds of great numbers, over forms and
ceremonies. We can hardly conceive, he says, what a revolution a Jew
must have experienced in giving up Aaron, and altars, and times, and
seasons, and all the minute regard for his religious ceremonies, at
once. Even if it were the original practice to baptize only by
immersion, he cannot think that Christianity could have enjoined it as
the only proper mode of applying water, in signifying religious
consecration. Bread and wine, eaten and drunk decently and in order, in
any way whatever, constitutes the Lord's Supper; water, applied to the
person, by a proper administrator, in the name of the Trinity,
constitutes Christian baptism; but, had the New Testament required us to
recline, and lean on one arm, and take the Lord's Supper with the other
arm, insisting that this posture is essential to that sacrament, or had
it specified the quantity of bread and wine, he thinks it would have
been parallel to the uninspired requirement of a particular mode in
applying the water in baptism.
"Baptize," he further remarks, it is said, means immerse. Suppose that
it does. Supper means a meal; therefore, one does not "eat the Lord's
Supper," unless he eats a full meal; for, if baptize refers to the
quantity of water, supper refers to the quantity of food and drink in
the other sacrament. He then seems to exult, and says, "I am glad that I
am not in conscientious subjection to any mode of doing anything in
religion, as being essential to the thing itself."
_Mother._ What answer can be made to this?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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