The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

weak and sickly among you, and many sleep' (v. 28-30). The unworthy
reception of the Supper, which involves so great a guilt, produces, also, a
serious punishment. He who eats and drinks bread and wine in the Supper
as if they were common food and common drink, without considering that
bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, draws upon himself, by
so eating and drinking, a penalty. Upon the body into which he receives
bread and wine he draws sickness and death. It is at once apparent that
such results cannot be explained on the theory that this is a mere
symbolical transaction, in which there lies just so much as faith puts into it.
This feast, ordained and dispensed of God, through faith in Christ, has as
its substance the divine word concerning the sacrificial death, which word,
Jesus Christ, who has instituted this feast, imparts to the recipient.
Inasmuch as the word of God, as spoken or written, never goes forth void,
but is a savor of death unto death to every one to whom it is not a savor of
life unto life, so in the Supper the word concerning the atoning death of
Christ is not merely set forth, but Christ applies it, by the hand of the
ministrant, to the recipient for bodily reception. But a visible word of God,
which Christ applies to the individual after the manner of sensible
reception, is a sacramental word. The same result is reached by attentively
considering 1 Cor. x. 16, seq. The discourse is of sacrificial flesh. As in
Israel those who ate of the sacrifice entered into the fellowship of the altar,
so those who participated in the banquets on the Heathen sacrifices
entered into the fellowship of the gods who are Demons. He who drinks
the cup of the Lord cannot drink the cup of Demons, and he who
participates at the table of the Lord cannot take part at the table of
Demons. 'The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of
the blood of' Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion
of the body of Christ? For we, being many, are one bread and one body:
for we are all partakers of that one bread' (v. 16, 17). As the sacrificial flesh
of the Jews and Heathen united them with the altar, and, consequently,
with the God, or the gods, to whom the altar was reared, so is the bread of
the Supper the communion, that is, the medium of