Consider 1

Consider. I.

That the Communion Table is not an Altar, you will find in the Book of Martyrs, six reasons given by that reforming King Edward the sixth for the proof of this assertion. I shall but offer to you three reasons briefly to evince it.

Reas. 1. Because the Scripture calls it a table, but not an altar, and we ought to speak as God and Christ has taught us of his ordinances, (1 Corinthians 10:21) "You cannot be partakers of the Lord's Table, and of the Table of Devils," (Luke 22:21) "the hand of him that betrayeth me, is with me on the Table." But Christ himself is our altar, as in that text (Hebrews 13:10), "we have an altar whereof they have no right to eat that serve the Tabernacle." By the altar is meant Christ, and to eat him, is fructum passionis percipere, et ipsi tanquam Capiti incorporari. If they will needs have it to be meant of an altar of stone, as the Jesuits and Prelates pretend, they must expound the text thus, that for reward of their obstinate cleaving to the ceremonies of the Law, they shall not eat stones, a small punishment for so great a sin.

Reas. 2. An altar implies a sacrifice, and sacrificing priests, but the Lord's Supper is not a sacrifice, therefore the table is not an altar. The use of an altar is to offer sacrifice upon, but when we come to the Sacrament, what do we come for? Do we come to sacrifice Christ again, and to crucify the Son of God afresh? No, but we come to commemorate and celebrate the memory of Christ's death and sacrifice, who offered up himself once for all, as the Scripture often speaks (Hebrews 7:27; 9:25, 26, 28; 10:2, 10), wherein he was both Priest, sacrifice, and altar himself: a Priest in regard of both his natures, his human nature was the sacrifice that was slain and offered up to God for us, and his Deity was the altar that sanctified the offering, and gave that infinite virtue and value to his sufferings. To talk of a commemorative sacrifice in the Sacrament is mere non-sense, and a contradiction. For as the picture of a man is no man, or of fire is no fire, so the commemoration of a sacrifice, is in truth no sacrifice. The Lord's Supper therefore needs no sacrificing priest: of which some of the very Jesuits have confessed, that the New Testament does abstain from that word Priest, as more proper for the old Law, for sacrifices and idols, ab hoc abstinet novum Testamentum ut magis proprio antiquæ legis, Sacrificii & Idolorum, concedo. Therefore altars ought to be abolished. For as long as the altars remain, both the ignorant people, and the ignorant and evil persuaded priests will alway dream of a sacrifice, as Hooper the Martyr well observes. For priests, altar and sacrifice are relatives, and have a mutual and inseparable dependance upon one another, neither do these altars more agree to the Christian religion than the cauldron, the fire-pan, the basin, the shovel, the flesh-hook, the gridiron, and such like instruments which the priests of Aaron used in preparing, dressing, and doing their sacrifices, as has been long ago observed.

Reas. 3. If the Communion Table were an altar, then it should be greater and better than the sacramental bread and wine, or the Lord's Supper itself, and a means to consecrate them. For the altar sanctifies all the gifts and sacrifices that are offered upon it, and is greater than the gift, as our Savior teaches us (Matthew 23:18, 19), and hence it is said, that the altar shall be holiness of holinesses, or most holy (Exodus 29:37; 40:10). And indeed the Prelates place a kind of holiness in their altars, and therefore they rail them in, but this conceit will be [illegible] when we come to speak of the holiness of places. But in the mean time, seeing there is no man so blind and desperate, as to say, that the table is greater than the Lord's Supper, this is enough to [illegible] not an altar.

It is true, some of the Ancients have called it an altar, but un-Scripturally, and improperly, as they did also use other extravagant and wanton metaphors, calling it solium Christi, the throne of Christ, whereas Christ is not represented on the table in his majesty, as upon a throne, but in his lowest humility, and deepest abasement, as broken, crucified, &c. And although some have been so tender, as to say, they will not condemn these unapt and dangerous metaphors and expressions of the Ancients, yet I find that very learned, moderate, worthy men, are not afraid to disapprove them. This improper speech was dangerous, (says one) and has proven hurtful to the Kirk, transforming indeed a table into an altar. These hyperbolical expressions and wanton metaphors of the Ancients, (says another) have unawares to them good men, filled the Church with superstition. It matters not therefore, how near the Ancients and others do come in their expressions, but how near they come to the Truth, and holy Scriptures, which never spake in such a language. Another says, though some of the Fathers called it an altar, yet it does not follow, that we may now lawfully do it, or that they did well in it. For when they used this manner of speech, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and Mass Priests, with other idolatrous Popish trash was not known nor heard of in the world, neither were there any to be scandalized with those phrases, and to wrest them to such ill ends and purposes as since they have been. But the Fathers might better have spared, than used them, since all this hurt, but no good at all have proceeded from them. And there be remarkable testimonies in some of the Fathers against altars. For Origen who lived about two hundred years after Christ, has these words: Objicit nobis, quod non habemus Imagines, aut aras, aut Templa. Celsus charges the Christian religion with this, that we have neither images, nor altars, nor temples. In answer to which, Origen does not deny the charge, but confesses the matter of fact to be true, and defends it from the very fundamental grounds of religion, and so does Arnobius and sundry others.

For the Papists indeed to call the Lord's Table an altar is not unsuitable to their own principles, who pretend to offer in their Mass a propitiatory sacrifice for quick and dead, but we that are Protestants cannot call it by that name, because it is neither consistent with the truth, nor with ourselves, as has been showed. Justly therefore are the Prelates charged with a design to destroy and undermine the Protestant religion, and to introduce and usher in Popery, by these their Popish innovations. For the very name of altars, as being Jewish and heathenish, was quite expunged, in the Reformation out of Popery, so that as the learned have observed, it is not to be found in the Book of Common Prayer, Articles, Injunctions, Homilies, Canons, (till 1640,) which never term the Lord's Table an altar, neither properly, nor improperly; yes, there is an Act of Parliament in which altars are expressly enumerated, and mentioned as relics of Popery, with namely, beads, pictures, all which are by that statute appointed to be defaced and burnt. And if you look into the story of the Reformation, you will find that the first thing that was done upon the beginning of the Reformation, was the pulling down of altars, and setting up Communion Tables, and the first thing again acted upon the restitution of Popery, was the setting up of altars, and turning Communion Tables into altars; which the Prelates were doing with all their might, before their late downfall. And what means all that Massing furniture and fooleries, wherewith their altars are adorned, as tapers, candlesticks, basins, crucifixes, crosses, rich altar-cloths, arras hangings, clasped brave books, with crosses instead of bosses, crimson and scarlet cushions — what means all this, if it does not proclaim their love and affection to the Church of Rome, to whom they do thus conform themselves, and so much for this first consideration, I shall be more brief in the rest.