Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Sacrament - christiansquoting.org.uk

Division has always been a disease of the church... The Love Feast, which should have been the sign and symbol of perfect unity, has become a thing of divisions and class distinctions. And here there is something which only the newer translations reveal. In the older translations, it is said that to eat and drink at the sacrament without discerning the Lord's body is the way to judgment and not to salvation. But in the best Greek text, the word Lord's is not included. The sin is not to discern the body; that is to say, not to discern that the church is a body, not to be aware of the oneness of the church, not to be aware of the togetherness in which all its members should be joined.- William Barclay (1907-1978), Ethics in a Permissive Society

He was the Word, that spake it:
He took the bread and brake it;
And what that Word did make it,
I do believe and take it.
John Donne. 1573-1631. Divine Poems. On the Sacrament

There is more in sacramental bread than in common bread. Though the nature is not changed, the use is changed. It does not only nourish the body as it did before, but also it brings a bread with which it nourishes the soul. For as sure as we receive bread, so sure we receive Christ - not only the benefits of Christ, but Christ.- Henry Smith

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