Inconsistency

Then surely we must be the most inconsistent set of Christians in the world, to hold up the necessity of baptism by our profession, and yet when we come to the Lord’s table, practically deny it, by receiving those to our communion whom we do not hesitate to tell the world, we look upon as unbaptized persons; and so for the sake of holding free communion, we must “build again the thing that we have destroyed, and thereby make ourselves transgressors,” for once renouncing them.

Thomas Baldwin, The Baptism of Believers on, and the Particular Communion of the Baptist Churches Explained and Vindicated in Three Parts, (Boston: Manning & Loring, 1806), 36.

THE ESSENCE OF AN ORDINANCE IS ITS SYMBOLISM

“Take, eat! They were not merely to look at the bread, even after it had been broken, and so had bee made to represent the breaking, bruising, suffering, dying of the Savior’s body; but they must take it and eat it; thus symbolically renewing that appropriation of the atonement which they are supposed to have made already, and without which they would have no right to the Supper. It is to be feared that many Communicants, even on the most Evangelical Churches, are so feeble in Christian character that, in eating the Bread and drinking the Wine, they do little more than to make an effort to remember the historical fact that Christ died for Sinners.”

DR. WILLIAMS’ NOTES ON MATT. XXVI: 27.