Why is there so much disagreement about holy communion?

Well, then, should we not have the Lord's supper celebrated in our midst, according to the order laid down in the New Testament? Ought we to lend our countenance to the sacrifice of the mass, or consubstantiation, because the true idea of the Eucharist seems to have been lost to the professing church for so many ages? Surely not. What are we to do? Take the New Testament and see what it says on the point — bow in reverent submission to its authority — spread the Lord's table in its divine simplicity, and celebrate the feast according to the order laid down by our Lord and Master, who said to His disciples, and therefore to us, "This do in remembrance of me."

Will any one say, "It makes no matter how we celebrate the Lord's supper, provided we have it at all, and are sincere in our observance of it." I ask, are the Lord's table and the Lord's supper to be observed according to the Lord's Word, or according to our own notions? Is it true that the Lord's supper, as presented in His Word, is designed to set forth the unity of His body, to show out His death, and to recall Him to remembrance in the way of His own special appointment? Nay, more, is it true that the Lord's supper is the only way in which the church can truly give expression to these grand realities? I confess I do not see how this can be called in question. Well, then, can we with impunity neglect or tamper with the holy institution? Why, my beloved friend, when it was merely a question of a woman having her head covered or uncovered, the inspired apostle is so peremptory on the point, that he closes all discussion by the authoritative and withering statement, "If any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God!" What would he say to any interference with the time or mode of celebrating the holy supper of the Lord?

This is an ordinance which has been completely taken out of its place, as we have it in the Word of God, and is relegated to a place never once found there. With whom saints can break bread and with whom they cannot has in the present day been more in discussion than almost any religious question. It is not ‘With whom does Scripture say I am to walk in righteousness love and peace?’ but the question almost invariably is ‘With whom can I eat the supper of the Lord?’

of this unspeakable love of Christ by His beloved saints. It is not here the inauguration of this holy ordinance, for we find in the Gospels that the Lord gave it to the disciples before He suffered, and here the Apostle reminds the saints at Corinth that he had already delivered it to them. Here it is the indoctrination of the saints into the true meaning, import, and character of the holy feast, which if ever they had understood they had at this time entirely forgotten. Through the allowance of the fleshly mind they had become divided up into sects and parties, much like what we have in the professing church today, and each of these separate parties ate the supper by themselves. It was now their own supper, for it had lost the character of the Lord’s. This the Apostle seeks to correct, and makes known to them that the reason sickness and death were so prevalent among them was on account of the disgraceful way in which they had conducted themselves at this sacred ordinance.

Then the church itself is brought into view. The first thing is not the fact that Christians are the members of Christ, who constituted the body of Christ, the gifts of the body and the exercise of these gifts. The Lord's supper, that blessed memorial of His love in His sacrificial death, the love which passeth knowledge, is the first thing mentioned. "Do this in remembrance of Me" was His request in the night in which He was betrayed. When the Holy Spirit came and the company gathered in fellowship we read at once of "the breaking of bread," to remember Him (Acts 2:46). The first thing in the assembly must be to remember Christ, His death, His presence in glory, His coming again. But before the Apostle tells them what he had received of the Lord, he had to reprove them for their disorder and their divisions. In these sects and parties they denied the very truth of the church as the one body, the body of Christ. They had a custom of eating a meal in connection with the Lord's supper. And at this meal some drank to excess, while it seems this custom of a preliminary meal led to a complete neglect or unworthy observance of the supper itself. Then he writes of what he had received of the Lord. How simple it all is! "This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me. For as oft as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come." The Lord's supper is to remember Him, to show the Lord's death till He come. And all else that man has made of it is pure invention, if not wicked blasphemy, like the idolatrous mass of Romanism. And how often shall this feast, which delights His heart, where God's children worship and adore, be kept? In Apostolic days it was evidently kept every Lord's day (Acts 20:7).

When the Lord said, "This is my body," and "this is my blood," he used a figure of speech, as He often did, just as we do in showing a picture of a loved one, saying, "This is my mother," etc. We mean thereby that the picture is a likeness of our loved one, a representation, and no thought of literalness is implied by the words. Yet many have strained at the like expression of our Lord" This is my body"-and insist that the emblems of the Lord's Supper become, at the words of the priest or minister, literally His body and His blood to the participant.

Think of a disciple of John himself (and a most blessed old man he was, and a martyr too) going all wrong, and insisting on a tradition derived from John himself, contrary to the pope's tradition and his authority too! Well, Polycarp would not give in, nor Anicetus either; but they agreed, it seems, to part in peace, and each go his own way. But Victor, a more energetic and less Christian man than Anicetus, orders all the Christians in Asia to change their rules in this respect, and follow Rome, and give up their apostolic tradition. However, they would not; and then he excommunicated them all in mass, as far at least as Rome was concerned. It was thunder, however, not lightning, for they did not obey; and the bishops elsewhere continued in communion with them. This did not please all the bishops, says Eusebius, some of them writing pretty sharply to him (Victor); and Irenaeus warned him not to cut off whole churches who observed the tradition of their ancient customs. This was at the end of the second century; and then he adds (says Eusebius), not only was the controversy about the day, but about the form itself of the fast; for some think they ought to fast one day, others two, and others more, and some measure this day forty hours, day and night; and this variety of observance had not its birth first in our age, but began long before, with those who went before us … And then he adds, and thus the disagreement as to the fast commends the unanimity of the faith. — (Euseb. 5:24).

Thus was there this sad separation among these Christians. Luther charged Zwingli with heresy, and refused to have any communion with him. Indeed he was most violent, and his language shocking.

This may suffice. The real historical truth is that, when they departed from the simplicity of scripture, they got into the doctrine of a union of grace and bread in the sacrament, and then into a kind of consubstantiation, such as Luther held. When Paschasius Radbert had taught something more than this, he was violently opposed by many church authorities. Berengarius, who taught the contrary, was at last, and indeed more than once (though supported by church authorities), being persecuted by Hincmar, forced to retract; and at last, as I have said, in 1215 transubstantiation was made a dogma of the faith, but never before.

R. The church teaches that she believes quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, and we are told to interpret Scripture by consent of the Fathers. Now this we cannot say we have as to transubstantiation. For if some did believe in it (which is not yet apparent), certainly a great many did not, and early ones; so that both rules fail. You talk of the Fathers and the church, but they do not, in primitive times at least, make good your assertion. But I confess I should like to continue our search into these ancient authorities.