I'm doing a bit of background reading about communion at the moment. The only passage in the New testament that has any liturgy attached to it is the Instuitution of the Lord's Supper which is the retelling of the Last Supper ut in Paul's words. But whenever it is read we miss out the last verse whcih reads:
Anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Master irreverently is like part of the crowd that jeered and spit on him at his death. Is that the kind of "remembrance" you want to be part of? Examine your motives, test your heart, come to this meal in holy awe.
In the past it has always been there. Knox had it and all the reformers. Even another old liturgy by a guy called Laud calls on communicants
first to examine your lives and conversation by the rule of God's commandments; and whereinsover ye shall perceive yourselves to have offered, either by will, word or deed, there bewail your sinful lives, and confess yourselves to Almighty God, with full purpose of emendment of life... for otherwise the receiving of the holy Communion doth nothing else but increase your damnation.
Ah, that's better.
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