# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1863_S267
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Some Remarks on a New Apology of the Reformed Church. 267

body] is really — and not only present to faith — really, and not only partaken through faith. But to assert that the unbelieving communicants lack every organ for the reception of the body of Christ is therefore ridiculous, since it is precisely the mouth, to which the Lord presents his body with the bread, and nothing else, that is the organ for its reception — an organ which, as is well known, is given to unbelievers just as much as the organ of the ear for the reception of the heavenly word.

It is no less ridiculous when Mr. K. argues, from the fact that unbelievers have no organ for discerning the body and blood of Christ, that they therefore cannot partake of Christ's body and blood either. What logic: because a man cannot distinguish one food from another, he therefore cannot eat it either! — Here too the argument must be turned around. The Apostle says: "He that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, because he discerneth not the Lord's body." 1 Corinthians 11:29. If, then, the unbeliever eats and drinks judgment to himself in the holy Supper precisely because he does not discern the body of the Lord there, he must indeed be partaking of it, only that, instead of becoming a partaker of the blessed fruit of this enjoyment, he "receiveth death instead of life"; just as of old many touched Christ's body, but only the woman with the issue of blood, who touched it in faith, experienced the healing power that flowed out from it, while unbelievers today, though they come so near to Christ's holy humanity, do so only to their own condemnation. Luke 8:43–48.

Mr. K. closes the section of his article dealing with the doctrine of the holy Supper with the words: "Our Reformed Church has wholly put away this Roman leaven, of which a little already spoils the whole lump, in that it ascribes the blessings of the holy Meal only to believers — to whom, indeed, it also reckons those souls who are wrestling, sighing, and therefore pleading after a living faith — and holds fast, with an appeal to John 6, to: 'It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak, they are spirit, and they are life.'" On this we have first of all only this to remark, that it is either a manifest deceit or betrays a fabulous thoughtlessness when Mr. K., on this basis, represents it as specifically Reformed that the Reformed Church "ascribes the blessings of the holy Meal only to believers." As if the Lutheran Church ascribed the blessings of the holy Supper to unbelievers as well! Whereas the difference between the Lutheran Church and the Reformed consists rather in this: that the former believes Christ's body and blood are truly present in the holy Supper and are therefore, as a matter of course, partaken by all communicants by means of the elements with the mouth — by the believer unto salvation, by the unbeliever unto his judgment — while the Reformed Church believes that Christ's body and blood are not truly present in the holy Supper and are not "tied" to the sacramental elements, and are therefore, in truth, partaken really neither by unbelievers nor by believers,