Your principle is all wrong. It is not on a word I rest; but the Lord's table is not the expression of the external thing. The one loaf is the expression of the one body: baptism is the rite connected with the external thing. The table of the Lord therefore expresses unity, association with Christ; and this is the whole ground of the apostle's argument in 1 Cor. 10. Now they are avowedly in division: Baptist tables where others cannot go; others, where they are not members of the church even if admitted—they are members of such a church, but not of Christ, as being there. They may individually remember piously the Lord's death, and in that sense have the Lord's supper; but they are avowedly, on church ground, on other ground than the unity of Christ's body. I am fully satisfied that from Paul's death they never were even on the true ground of salvation, and identified the body with the corrupt external thing; though till, say A.D. 240, there was no external division—at which period some separated because they received back those who had denied the Lord in Decius' persecution.
If they are the Lord's table, why should not I go to them? it would be pure schism.
September, 1877.