DISSENT FROM THE ACTION ON INDIVIDUAL CUP.

We record our dissent from the action of Synod in granting the privilege to sessions of introducing the Individual cup in the sacramental feast for the following reasons:

1. Because it does not comport with the symbolical character of the feast. The communion is a sermon in action. Every part has a significance. The taking of the bread and cup signifies the incarnation, the breaking of the bread the crucifixion, the giving of the elements the conveyance of Christ’s salvation, the receiving of the bread and wine our acceptance of Christ, the eating and drinking of them our appropriation of the sacrificial benefits of Christ’s death, and the passing of the elements from one to another the common participation of believers in the great salvation. But the individual cup breaks the symbol of our fellowship one with another. It is dangerous to break God’s symbol.

2. Because our lord instituted the Sacramental feast in the use of the common cup. The originally appointed order should be retained. There is no more reason for believing- that twelve cups were used in the upper room in the institution of the Lord’s Supper than that there were twelve basins used when our Lord took a towel and girded Himself and poured water in a basin and began to wash His disciples feet. From that night until within a quarter of a century the general consensus of Christian conviction was that our Lord used one common cup in instituting the Lord’s Supper. This is our profound conviction.

3. Because the Individual cup unwarrantably divides our people at the foot of the mount of ordinances. I could not conscientiously commune where the individual cups were used. There are many members in the Covenanter Church who share with me in this conviction. No one thinks that the church has been committing sin in Reformed Presbyterian Church 63 using the common cup for 1875 years. And no one thinks it is a violation of the command of Christ to celebrate His death in the use of the common cup. So that we are all agreed that it is right to commemorate the death of Christ in the use of the common cup. But some of us hold that the individual cup is a perversion of the ordinance and we cannot join in it. Therefore one part of our people must part company with another part at the Lord’s Table.

4. Because the Individual cup is a change in the name of science. The Lord of all the ages ordained the common cup, forseeing all the scientific discoveries. The power of the common cup to break down race prejudice and caste systems is a deeper system of the Great Physician than the sanitary proposals of our modern physicians. Rome did wrong in withholding the cup from the laity. Let us not change the cup.

J.M. FOSTER.