Baptists hold that there are _three_ imperative conditions precedent to the privileges of the Lord's Supper: 1. _Regeneration._ No unconverted person can with propriety, or of right, eat and drink at that sacred feast, in commemoration of Christ's death. They must be persons dead to sin, and alive to God; born again, through the operation of the Spirit. 2. _Baptism._ Buried with Christ in baptism on a profession of faith in Him. No person, however good, and however manifestly regenerate, is prepared without baptism, according to the Divine order, to receive the Supper. Without baptism he cannot enter the fellowship of the church, where the Supper alone is to be enjoyed. 3. _An orderly walk is necessary._ An upright and consistent Christian walk, and godly conversation among the saints, and before the world. For though one may be truly regenerate, and properly baptized, yet if he be a disorderly walker, violating his covenant obligations, living in sin, and bringing reproach on the Christian profession, he has no right to sit at the Lord's Table. The ordinances are a sacred trust which Christ has committed to the churches as custodians, and which they are to watch and guard from all profane intrusion, and improper use, with the most sedulous fidelity. Baptists believe that in order to maintain the purity and spirituality of the churches, it is necessary to maintain the ordinances pure; and especially necessary to restrict the Supper to regenerate and godly persons, baptized on a profession of their faith, into the fellowship of the saints. To adopt any other rule, or to allow any larger liberty, would break down the distinction between the church and the world; would bring in a carnal and unconverted membership, and transfer the sacred mysteries of the body and the blood of Christ from the temple of God to the temple of Belial. This would be disloyalty to Christ. The Apostolic plan was as follows: Those who _believed_ and _gladly received the Word,_ were _baptized._ Then they were _added to the church._ Then they continued steadfastly in the _Apostles' doctrine,_ and fellowship, and in _breaking of bread,_ and in _prayer._ _Notice,_ they were not baptized till they had received the Word and believed. They were not added to the church till they had believed and been baptized. They did not engage in the breaking of bread (that is, the Supper,) till they had believed, been baptized, and were added to the church. This is the Divine order; and this is the order which Baptists maintain and defend. PEDOBAPTIST CLOSE COMMUNION It has already been shown that Pedobaptists themselves practice a restricted or close communion, limiting the privilege to baptized (as they call them) members of evangelical churches, and that their communion is more liberal than that of the Baptists only, and only by so much as their baptism (so-called) is more liberal than that of Baptists.