2. No necessity of auricular confession; to tell all the secrets of the
understanding, so neither are madmen, because they have lost that understanding they had, and the great mysteries of religion must not be exposed to contempt. And in regard of a negligent inability, as ignorant persons who neglect the means of knowledge, or improve them not to furnish themselves with a sufficient stock of knowledge to this end, so a man grown in age may be a child in understanding, and upon the same account is as incapable as a child of this ordinance; men, therefore, are unfit to come without a distinct knowledge of the doctrine of the gospel.
2. All persons who cannot find upon examination anything of a divine stamp upon them in the lowest degree. Such are all unrenewed men, who have not one bruise in their souls, not one breath of smoke and gracious desire towards Christ in their hearts, and consequently all scandalous persons in life, who are as uncapable, by their spiritual madness and contracted vicious habits, as men that are mad naturally, by a distemper of their brain. This trial is for the finding fit qualifications for this ordinance, τὶ δοκιμον, something sound and worthy, which such persons cannot upon examination find.
This command of self-examination evidenceth to us, 1. That a Christian may come to the knowledge of his state in grace; otherwise it would be wholly fruitless to examine ourselves. If we may know by the want of saving conditions that we are in a state of nature; we may know by the presence of them, that we are in a state of grace.
2. No necessity of auricular confession; to tell all the secrets of the life to a priest.
So let a man eat of this bread, and drink of this cup. So, not otherwise; it is a hedge planted against every intrusion. So, not without examination, and a fitness upon it. It is not an ordinance appointed for every man; there is a manifest distinction between
persons capable of the word, and capable of the supper. Preaching is to be to every creature, every rational creature, Mark 16:15, 16.
Unbelievers are capable of the word, believers only of the supper.
The one is to bring men into the family, the other to nourish them after their entrance. If any man find himself in a state of death, let him repent, believe, resolve a new and serious life, and so let him come, not else; for without those he can receive no fruit of spiritual grace in this ordinance.
So let him eat, so let him drink. The apostle* here obviates an error crept into the Romish church, the taking away the cup, a custom unknown in the purest and primitive times of Christianity. 'Let him eat and drink,' saith the apostle; 'Let him eat, but not drink,' saith the church of Rome. How soundly doth the Romish church accord with the primitive church! 'Drink ye all of this,' saith Christ, Matt. 26:27;
'Let the people not touch the cup,' saith Rome. How valid with them is the authority of that Christ they profess to be the Son of God, and the supreme head of the church! The apostle, saith Estius, commands that none should partake without examination, but doth not command that every one should drink. I answer, either it is a command or a permission; it seems to be a command. As the apostle commands the self-trial, so he commands the end of that trial, which is drinking the cup as well as eating the bread. If he commands the trial, he commands much more the participation, because in enjoining the means, he enjoins the end. We are bound to the use of means only in order to the end of those means. If the apostle commands the eating the bread, he commands also the partaking of the cup, the word so, &c., being grammatically to be applied to both.
It would be ridiculous to think that the apostle's language was in this strain: Let a man examine himself, and if he finds himself fit for this mystery, let him choose whether he will either eat or drink; he may do one or both if he will, or he may let it alone if he will. Who would dare to put such a sense upon the apostle's words? If let be a word of command in the former sentence, it is no less in the latter. If therefore, he commands examination as a means, he commands communion as the end; and communion much more, since the end is
nobler than the means, and the means desirable for the sake of the end. But if it be a permission of the apostle, (for that it must be at least in the judgment of any man), that every one finding himself fit upon a trial, may drink of the cup as well as eat of the bread; what power on earth should deny that, which the inspired apostle and great doctor of the Gentiles permits? What pope or councils have authority to deprive any Christian of that which the founder of the Gentile church hath upon record allowed unto them? What reason can be alleged that it is not as proper for the church now, as it was for the church of the Corinthians? It was of use many centuries after the apostles' times, and is practised in all churches but that of Rome, wherein the denial of the cup was introduced about two hundred sixty odd years ago. What a blessing do we enjoy, to be freed from the antichristian yoke, and enjoy those privileges which the wickedness of men would deprive us of!
Bread and Cup. The doctrine of transubstantiation was not then known in the church. † The apostle calls it bread and cup three several times, vers. 26–28. Our reason, our sense, our sight, our taste, informs us it is bread and wine. The papists tell us, against reason and sense, that it is not bread, though it have the colour and taste of bread, but it is really the flesh and blood of Christ; it is changed and transmuted into his body and blood. It is indeed a sign of the body of Christ, a memorial of his broken, crucified body, and of his blood shed. The water in baptism represents the blood of Christ for the washing the soul, as the wine doth his blood for the nourishment and comforting the soul. Can any man say against his sense that it is not truly water? The church is called 'the body of Christ,' Eph. 1:22, 23. But have not those men and women that make up the church, distinct persons from the person of Christ, distinct substances from the body of Christ? Are they upon their onion to Christ as his members changed into the nature of Christ, and corporally his members, as his hands, and feet, and fingers were his upon the earth, and are his now in heaven? Why should the apostle call it so often bread, if it were not bread, if the nature and substance of it were changed into another substance? The Scripture gives both
the names of bread and wine, and the body and blood of Christ, to the elements. They cannot be both properly; it cannot be bread properly, and the body of Christ properly; one therefore must be figuratively understood. Our sense tells us, and the apostle informs us, that it is bread; therefore it is called the body of Christ by a figure, since it hath nothing of the qualities of the flesh, but the essential qualities of bread. Besides, had it been properly the body of Christ, the apostle had discoursed far below his intention, which was to correct the irreverence of the Corinthians in this ordinance, and to recommend to them the sober and venerable use of it. He had neglected the main argument to enforce his main design, had it been properly the body of Christ, which would have made their irreverence more unreasonable, and of the highest guilt imaginable.
He had been imprudent to have neglected acquainting them that this was the substance of the body of Christ, his very flesh and blood, and had been unfaithful in his trust, and silent in the most considerable argument. This had been more for his present purpose; but there is not a syllable of any such thing.* The apostle might have argued in a higher manner from that, to convince them of the sinfulness of unworthy receiving; but he makes a manifest distinction between the bread and the cup, and between the body and blood of Christ: 'He that eats this bread and drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.' The bread and wine may be received unworthily, but the body and blood of Christ cannot be received unworthily. That implies a contradiction; for Christ assures us that 'every one that eats his flesh, and drinks his blood, hath eternal life,' John 6:54. The papists say, † that because he that receives unworthily is guilty of the body and blood of Christ, therefore the body and blood of Christ is really in the sacrament.
Saul's persecuting the disciples of Christ was, in the account of Christ, a persecuting of himself, Acts 9:4. Was the body of Christ, glorified in heaven, really present in the bodies of his disciples persecuted by Saul? And when the apostle speaks (Heb. 10:29) of 'treading under foot the Son of God,' who is so foolish as to imagine that the Son of God was really in his person and body under the feet of those apostates, as the body of an enemy they had thrown down
might be under their feet? The bread is called the body of Christ representatively and sacramentally. And it is an ingenious observation of a learned man, ‡ that the word, 'This is my body,' refers to the supper in distinction from the passover, which Christ put an honourable end unto: Matt. 26:26, 'As they were eating' (i.e., as they were eating the paschal lamb), 'Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, Take eat, this is my body.' The paschal lamb was Christ's body in a figure, Exod.
12:46. Speaking of the paschal lamb, 'Neither shall you break a bone thereof,' which is applied to Christ, who had not a bone of his body broken upon the cross, which John takes notice of as a 'fulfilling of the scripture,' John 19:36. 'These things were done that the scripture should he fulfilled, A bone of him shall not he broken;' which can refer to no other but the command about the paschal lamb in that place of Exodus. To this it is that the word τοῦτο doth refer in the speech of our Saviour: 'This is my body.' The passover had been a sacramental type of the body of Christ to the Jews. He was the Lamb of God, and he is 'our passover sacrificed for us.' But now Christ takes bread, and tells them, This is my body under the gospel. The paschal lamb shall no more be a representation of my body, as it hath been hitherto, but this shall be the sign of it. The bread upon this account is no more really the body of Christ than the paschal lamb was the body of Christ for so many ages, wherein it had represented it, which none of the Romanists will acknowledge to be transubstantiated into the body of Christ. They differed not in their representation, but only in the circumstance of time; one representing Christ to be slain, the other representing him crucified and slain already.
In ver. 29 the apostle describes the punishment, as he had (ver. 27) described the sin: 'For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.'
He that eats and drinks unworthily. (1.) In an unworthy state. (2.) In an unworthy frame, not actually discerning the Lord's body.