Just a word of introduction to our first talk for today's meeting on open and closed communion. This topic was decided really providentially shortly after our last meeting late last year. Many of you were here for when Pastor Dennis Clark covered the chapter in the Second London Baptist Confession dealing with the Lord's Supper. And I noticed that after the meeting that a lot of, particularly the younger brethren, had a lot of questions relating to topics and practical issues dealing with communion, and specifically open and closed communion. So I just kind of recognized that. Okay, that's interesting. You know, it seems like there could be some benefit of opening that topic up. And then I was doing my own research in the first century particular Baptist churches, and this issue of open and closed communion was patently obvious to then what was an important issue amongst them. And then I started thinking about it. Well, you know, should we do a talk like this? Because it can unnecessarily be controversial. And some would question perhaps the wisdom of even opening up and looking at it. But brothers, we don't have anything to fear by looking back at our history and opening up. the theological positions of these men, what were their differences, and then most of all, learning from the wisdom that they displayed and how they handled it. And so that's why we're talking about it. This is not an issue in any way, shape, or form that is contentious amongst any of the churches that participate in this fellowship. It really is just a practical issue that deals with communion, and we are happy to have Pastor Ron Miller with us today to open it up for us. Many of you may know Pastor Ron Miller. He has a podcast on a line that you can look up. It's called Particular Pilgrims. You can access it. I Googled it for today in this introduction. You could Google particular pilgrims and you can get it that way. You can go to Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. They have a podcast and his is one of the channels or one of the shows on that podcast. You can find out more there from him with that regards. Brother Miller comes from us from Covenant Baptist Church in Clarksville, Tennessee, where he pastors. And we're very thankful that you have come up, brother, and prepared this talk for us today. So without any further ado, Pastor Miller, if you'd come. I do have a handout of suggested readings for those of you who would like to explore this more, and I'll give those out when I'm finished. We're examining the often debated question in particular Baptist history, and it is this. Should unbaptized persons be admitted to the Lord's Supper? Should unbaptized persons be admitted to the Lord's Supper? Now, I've chosen that wording because it's the specific language used in the interchanges between William Kiffin and John Bunyan in the late 1600s. And it crisply summarizes the issue. Again, should unbaptized persons be admitted to the Lord's Supper. Now note several things about this question. First of all, the sphere of the debate is within particular Baptist circles. It does not directly involve other churches with their different views of church membership or baptism. This is a family debate, an intramural discussion for our purposes today. And secondly, the question assumes that the only valid baptism is immersion upon a credible profession of faith. All of the people that I will reference in this talk whether open or closed, agreed that the persons who have not undergone that baptism are unbaptized. So again, this is an intramural debate. These two points are the context for this debate. Now let me define some terms, then we'll look at some history and draw some lessons. Four pairs of generally synonymous terms have been used to describe the two views of who should rightly be allowed at the church's celebration of the Lord's Table. And depending on the era of the debate, different words predominated. So in general historical order, they are these. The first pair commonly used was free or restricted. Free or restricted. Free meant that any Christian, any visible disciple, baptized or not, could have access to the table. And restricted meant that the unbaptized were not allowed to partake. Later, the two terms became more popularly used, mixed or strict. Mixed or strict. Mixed meant that a Baptist church allowed both baptized and unbaptized to partake of the table. And strict referred to allowing only the baptized to have access to the church ordinance. The word strict in this context goes back into the late 1600s. It later became, in the 1800s, actually a moniker, a name for a certain category of Baptist churches that practiced strict communion. Christian or party, Christian communion or party communion. Now as you might guess, this pair of names was introduced by the open side of the debate. The idea was that anyone who was credibly a Christian could participate compared to only those of a certain party or a certain sect, such as the Baptist. Now, the obviously loaded connotation to these terms, I hope, is obvious to you. And I won't use them except by way of historical reference. And finally, open or closed or close communion, those are the usual modern terms. open, meaning the table is open to anyone considered a Christian, and closed, that the table is shut to all except the baptized. There are variations within most of these labels. For example, there are many, many varieties or levels of closed or close communion. I've identified at least eight. But for our purposes today, we have a few minutes. We're not writing eight books. We're going to spend a few minutes on this. And so I'm going to be using these four sets of two names as near synonyms. They're close enough for our purposes today. Now, we also have to remember that open or closed communion or open or closed access to the Lord's Supper is connected to the question of open or closed membership. In fact, in the 1600s, communion fundamentally meant membership, not access to the Lord's table. Open membership Baptist churches allow unbaptized, visible saints to join them in membership and then partake of the supper. And closed membership Baptist churches only allow the baptized to join in both. Early in Baptist life, there was a strong correlation between the terms of membership and the terms of communion, but that is no longer true. they are often now dealt with as entirely separate questions. So let's move now to the historical overview, and we are going to be moving really, really fast. So find your seat belts, buckle them up, get ready, let's go. The debate over open or closed communion has been a regular occurrence over the entirety of particular Baptist life. In the early years, the closed position was the strongly predominant view. That began to change in the 1800s so that today the open view is more prevalent. In the 1600s, the main debaters were William Kiffin and John Bunyan. In the 1700s, the main writers were Abraham Booth, John Ryland Jr., and a man named Daniel Turner. In the 1800s, it was Robert Hall Jr. and Joseph Kinghorn. but all particular Baptist pastors took a position on this issue. It was simply a practical necessity of church life. So what I would like us to do is review the arguments in very summary form of these authors and make some short observations by some other men who can contribute to this. Most of the men I'm going to cite are English, and this is because the most prominent writings were from England, and in the U.S., colonies, and later the United States, the closed position pretty much ruled entirely until the 1900s. So let's dive into the persons and teachings of each of the centuries of particular Baptist life, beginning in the 1600s. Let's look at the First London Baptist Confession of Faith. You might be surprised to be told that the first edition of the 1644 London Baptist Confession of Faith contains no mention of the Lord's Supper. Mention is made in the 1646 and 1651 revisions, but it's a very short statement in a paragraph on baptism. Here's what it reads. Baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament given by Christ to be dispensed upon persons professing faith or that are made disciples, who upon profession of faith ought to be baptized and after to partake of the Lord's supper. That's the entirety of what it says about the supper. There is a natural order here, indeed. Baptism followed by the supper. However, there's no discussion about church membership or the various possible practices that are involved. These early Baptists were still learning about how these things related to one another. And most of the signers, we know, held to a closed position, but at least one of them, a man named Henry Forty, was known to have been open in his communion practice. Now in 1646, Benjamin Cox wrote an appendix to explain and defend parts of the Confession. And he added several points about the Lord's Supper, such as, it should be done in the context of a local church. That's an important addition. It ought to be practiced until the end of the world, or Christ's return. And the right to partake of the supper, quote, doth immediately flow from Jesus Christ, apprehended and received by faith. We might say, well, that sounds open. Except he goes on to say that all things must be done according to the order of the word. And that order was found in Acts 2.41 and other places, where first came faith, then baptism, then admittance to the church supper. He sums up. We therefore do not admit any in the use of the supper, but disciples baptized. That's an early statement that's at least very close, if not equal to, the closed communion position. Well, what about the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith? Chapter 30 of the London Confession addresses many aspects of the Lord's Supper. It is clearly a church ordinance with sacramental blessings attached to it, but there is nothing about the relationship between baptism and the supper or the relation to church membership. The reason for the absence of such teaching is due to differences of understanding among those who signed it. A few of the churches practiced open membership and open communion. For example, Broadmead in Bristol, and probably even the Petit France Church, where William Collins and Nehemiah Cox pastored. And of course, Cox is the one who most likely edited the document. Almost all of the rest are known to have practiced closed membership and closed communion. But to maximize their agreement and the number of signing churches, they avoided pronouncements on this subject. And even in an appendix to it, allude to these differences. That brings us to John Bunyan and William Kiffin. Between the issuing of these two confessions, John Bunyan published a work entitled A Confession of My Faith and a Reason of My Practice. This book included a detailed defense of Bunyan's practice of open communion. And what he meant by open communion was both open membership and open access to the table. Bunyan's reasons are quite unusual and are not necessarily representative of how other open churches thought about these issues. In fact, some consider his views unique in church history. But because of his fame, Bunyan's practices were noticed and then challenged after the publication of this book. First, Bunyan taught that baptism was a personal ordinance or sacrament. He used both words interchangeably. He believed baptism was decreed by Jesus Christ and was of spiritual benefit, but only to those who underwent it. In other words, baptism couldn't be used as a way to testify to a church of a saving relationship to Christ. let alone be the means of joining them in communion. Baptism was a personal act only. Bunyan's second reason logically followed from the first. Baptism, he taught, was not a church ordinance or any part of church worship. He said, quote, baptism is outside the church without the house of God and baptism is none of the worship that Christ instituted in his church for them to practice as a church. And all of this led Bunyan to conclude that this individual ordinance couldn't qualify a person for church communion. either in the sense of membership or access to the table. When challenged that in the New Testament, baptism always preceded church membership, Bunyan didn't object. He answered that water baptism hath formerly gone first is granted. But that it ought of necessity, I never saw proof. So the accounts of people being converted, baptized, and joined to the church before taking the supper didn't faze Bunyan at all. He simply argued that the Bible doesn't teach that it must be that way. They're merely historical accounts. Instead, for him, if a person showed evidence of having communion with God in salvation, then other saints should have, in fact, must be willing to have communion with him at the table. The unbaptized should be accepted to the Lord's supper. Now there's another strain of teaching in by Bunyan about baptism that's a bit worrisome. On several occasions, he calls it, quote, bodily conformity to outward and shadowish circumstances, or similar kinds of things. He compares baptism and the supper to mosaic shadows that only point to the reality of the work of Christ and regeneration. Of course, his opponents agreed that the ordinances were signs of Christ. But were they only circumstances? Is shadowish a wise description? But what else could he call them since he said that they weren't any part of the instituted worship of God? So he strongly and unfavorably compared God's positive law in baptism to his moral law. And since baptism was destined to pass away, it was not at the heart of Christianity and so shouldn't be argued over in the churches. If there was an argument, the subject should be dropped, he said. This lessening of the importance of baptism is also often found in other open communionists, as we will see. Well, William Kiffin responded, and his goal was to, quote, preserve the ordinances of Christ in purity and order, and the order of the New Testament. He claimed that Bunyan's position was both contrary to scripture and contrary to church history. So first, Kiffin taught the gospel order for baptism was laid down by Christ and the apostles, and it was practiced by the primitive church. It was clear and it was consistent. First came conversion, then baptism, then being added to the church, which then gave title to the breaking of bread. This was the plain and repeated teaching of scripture Kiffin taught. The main texts that he relied on were Acts 2, 41 to 42, and Matthew 28, 18 to 20. He took the Acts passage as not merely descriptive of what took place in the early church, but prescriptive that it was the God-ordained order for the church. So no rearranging of the order of receiving the word, baptism, church union, and taking the supper was allowed. No steps could be added. No steps could be removed. No steps could be substituted. All of that was, in his mind, contrary to the regulative principle of worship. The timing and order of the instituted acts of worship begins with baptism. So Kiffin called baptism the sacramental door and the gate of sacraments, meaning that baptism must, italicized, bold-faced, underlined, must precede the Lord's Supper. Clearly, Kiffin's view of the sufficiency and authority of scripture on this matter widely differed from that of Bunyan. The Great Commission text was also key for Kiffin. He said the passage contains all we need in form of our initiation into covenant with God. And if it was initiating, then again, it must be done, and it must be done first in order before the supper. Baptism was no mere testimony to ourselves alone. It was that, but it wasn't merely that. Instead, it was the pledge of a good conscience, 1 Peter 3.21, to God, and it was part of his worship. Kiffin also believed that baptism made a person a member of the visible church and sealed his invisible union with Christ. So it wasn't optional. It was necessary for proper church order. Only the baptized should be admitted to the table. Now Kiffin also included a number of other reasons why Bunyan's position was mistaken. Here are a few of them in very, very short form. First, baptism is a foundation of church order, Hebrews 6, 1 and 2. It's one of those six elementary principles of church life, which must not be lost or ignored. Two, baptism was commanded by Christ. So how could it be optional or unnecessary for a church? Three, The rule for having a right to the communion table is found in Scripture. It's not found in the light within a Christian, which is where Bunyan placed it, or in his outward visible saintliness, or even in his good intentions. In other words, he was saying just because a person thought they were baptized in their infant sprinkling, didn't mean they were baptized, and didn't mean they were therefore qualified to the table, no matter how godly a person they were. Fourth, love for one another is not a rule that overthrows the rule of the worship of God in Christ. Fifthly, if baptism is unnecessary to be kept, and Bunyan was very clear about that, If baptism is unnecessary to be kept, how can any of the other ordinances be defended? Finally, Kiffin reminded Bunyan that all of church history stood against him. As he put it, his own view was, quote, not a new opinion, but the judgment of all Christians. Now, how could Kiffin say that? Because although believers through the ages might disagree on almost everything having to do with baptism, and they have, and church membership and the table, one thing was overwhelmingly agreed upon through the entirety of church history. The Lord's Supper was an ordinance only for church members and baptism was necessary to enter the church. Benjamin Keech agreed with Kiffin. He said, quote, mutual love is not to be the rule of our church communion and fellowship, but the word of Christ. So for Keech, scriptural baptism had to proceed and was a qualification for the table. And in the Baptist catechism, question 103, The closed position is espoused when it answers the question of who are the proper subjects of the Lord's Supper by saying, quote, they who have been baptized upon a personal profession of faith in Jesus Christ. That's restricted communion. So that's the 1600s. The 1700s. Closed communion was the overwhelming practice of the churches for the next 100 years. Then a pamphlet arguing for open communion was simultaneously published in 1772 under two names. One author called himself Pacificus, or peaceful, and the other called himself Candidas, or candid. Their real names were John Collett Ryland and Daniel Turner. Now, Ryland was the father of the better known in our day, John Ryland Jr., the friend of Fuller and Carey, pastor at Broadmead in Bristol, and the principal of Bristol Academy, the one place where Baptists trained men in a formal academic setting for the ministry. The elder Ryland's theology was very similar to John Gill's. But Turner was considered suspect in his theology. He did affirm particular election, for example, but at the same time, he espoused general redemption. He also called the Athanasian Creed stupid, and yes, that's a quote, stupid, saying its language was as different from the scriptures as darkness from light. In these things, Turner was closer to his untrustworthy friend, Robert Robinson, than particular Baptist doctrine. Robinson's view was that toleration of errors was the right and loving response to differences of opinion on baptism and the supper. He urged the quote, great unfitness of any scheme of religion if it doesn't make any provision for human imperfections. And so errors about baptism must not interfere with communion. What all three men shared in common was a strong love of liberty in the social and political climate of the late 1700s. Think American Revolution and French Revolution. And so they advocated for what they called free communion. The basic argument of the tract, which, by the way, is called a modest plea for free communion, was that all true Christians had an equal right to all the privileges of the gospel, including access to the Lord's table. To reject persons who were accepted by Christ was to, quote, set their faces against Christ. They further claimed that interpretations about baptism were merely private and disputable points. Given this, edification among believers was more important than the order applied with what they called, quote, uncommanded strictness. They further argued that the table was the Lord's. And so other Christians couldn't refuse those that he had accepted. And they were firm in their views, saying, quote, both sides cannot be right in their conclusions. Certainly right about that. They agreed that the scriptures showed baptism to be the initiating ordinance, but they considered the supper to be the more important ordinance. And so, quote, the least ought to give way to the greatest. Again, we see the tendency to denigrate baptism and elevate the supper. So it followed that accepting the unbaptized to the table was receiving the weak and allowing liberty of conscience to those who were mistaken. They called views of baptism, quote, a private opinion. The pamphlet didn't greatly advance the argument, but it opened the door to fresh debate. Several others wrote in favor of open communion. Others answered in opposition. And then six years later, in 1778, Abraham Booth wrote his Apology for the Baptists. This became the standard defense of strict communion for many years. And Booth was a strict Baptist indeed. He was willing to accept that title, assuming that it had no connotation of ill will toward others minded. But if all it meant was a strict adherence to the scriptural teaching, to the scriptural pattern, he was glad to accept that title. He believed holding to strict communion was simply being consistent as a Baptist. He said, quote, Baptists who aren't strict Baptists aren't, strictly speaking, Baptists, end quote. So the church he pastored, Little Prescott Street, Goodman Fields, London. wouldn't transfer members to an open communion Baptist church. Not that there were very many, but they wouldn't do it. He believed that only those churches who baptized by immersion as a prerequisite for church membership could rightly claim to properly serve the Lord's Supper. His main arguments were two. First, Only immersion is Christian baptism. Now, all of his opponents claimed to agree with this. So he didn't attempt to prove that any further. His first point was quite short. Second, all other Christians agreed that baptism preceded, necessarily preceded, communion. He argued, historically, it was the universal belief in churches that baptism was a term of communion. So it necessarily followed that anyone not immersed was not qualified to partake of the table. It also followed in his mind that given the historical case, the burden of proof wasn't on him, but was on the open opponents. His emphasis, though, like Kiffin's was on churchmanship, a churchmanship that closely followed the apostolic teaching and pattern. Booth made the point that loyalty to Christ didn't allow tampering with the ordinances, even in the name of love for true brethren. This view of the ordinances to him was not evidence of party spirit, nor was it contrary to devotion and love, He also argued against the idea that the strict Baptist placed an undue importance on baptism. Christ alone could regulate communion, he said, and he had placed the term of baptism on it. And he showed that from the Great Commission, the New Testament precedents, and the nature of the two sacraments. What the scripture displayed in the order of the two observances had to be kept by faithful Christians. He also makes an interesting argument about moral and positive laws. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are both positive, or we typically may say ceremonial laws. Positive laws can only be known by revelation, And because they are laws, purely because the lawgiver commands them, obedience to them shows supreme loyalty to Christ. Listen to Booth, quote, accursed then is the principle, and rebellious is the conduct of those who trifle with God's positive appointments, any more than the priests or the people of old. All right, he's thinking of, Two men who brought strange fire? That's the context. The integrity or motives or knowledge of the Christian coming to the table wasn't the question for Booth. The only thing that mattered was the rule of Christ. His writing is interesting, detailed, ironic, peaceable, and well-argued. It's also just downright fun in places. For the next 40 years, no one answered him. Andrew Fuller, shortly afterward, wrote a letter in support of closed communion, although he asked the friend that he wrote it to not to publish it until he died or it was absolutely necessary. That's a good few pages to read. It's simple. It's direct and appeals to the usual strict arguments that Booth led the way in. Now that brings us to the 1800s, and you need to understand that particular Baptists, while overwhelmingly of the closed communion practice, abided in really peace, associationally and in general fellowship with the open Communionists. An open communion answer to Booth finally came in the formidable writing of Robert Hall, Jr. In the early 1800s, he was perhaps the greatest orator in England, and that's saying something. He possessed a genius mind, and he really liked to practice radical politics. In 1815, he produced a book called Terms of Communion, and it was a direct challenge to Booth's apology. It was, as one man has said, quote, ferocious and wordy. Hall was both of those things. But it struck a chord with many who were beginning to struggle with strict communion. Hall's basic premise was that no Christian, no church, can set a condition of communion different from the conditions of salvation. In other words, saving faith alone was the condition for the Lord's table. Hall emphasized the unity of Christianity, saying that it was wrong for particular Baptists to not allow their acknowledged brothers who baptized infants to share the table with them. Although Hall agreed that infant baptism was no baptism, He taught that baptism, rightly or wrongly understood, was no term, no condition, no qualification for communion. He asked the question, who baptized the apostles? It was his belief that no one had baptized them. And so baptism did not. Right. So baptism did not necessarily precede the table. He said neither the Great Commission nor the New Testament elsewhere proved that baptism was necessary in all cases for coming to the Lord's Supper. Apostolic precedent did not decide the question for Hall. He agreed that it... Now this is really fascinating and mind-boggling. Listen to his argument here. He agreed that apostolic precedent was binding in the early church, but no longer was. Historical circumstances changed things. In the early church, all were properly baptized by immersion, and all came to the table. But now errors about baptism had entered into the church, and so this precedent no longer applied. Instead, love was to be applied. Because to exclude believing Paedo-Baptists from the table was a denial that they were Christians, Hall argued. He further stated that accepting them at the table didn't imply that infant baptism was valid. Instead, it showed that men were weak, and those who had doubtful practices should be lovingly accepted. For Hall, it was as simple as this. Paedo-Baptists were real Christians. They were part of the universal church, so excluding them from the table was unlawful and abhorrent. You can tell that Hall believed this with every fiber of his emotive being. He went so far as to say that this division at the table was, quote, by far the greatest calamity which has befallen the Christian interest. Now that's quite a statement. If Christ accepted the unbaptized, then so must the particular Baptists at the supper. The following year, Joseph Kinghorn answered Hall in a book entitled Baptism, a Term of Communion at the Lord's Supper. Kinghorn was pastor of Norwich Baptist Church, and actually a former pupil of Robert Halls. He faced the question this way, what has the Lord of the church prescribed? Arguing that love to fellow Christians is never to be at the expense of obedience to the directions of the word of God, he claimed that open communion was a repeal of the law given by Christ that baptism is a term or a prerequisite of communion. So for Kinghorn, the debate centered around the abiding authority of scripture. Christ's commands to Joseph were, they were still on the books and they must be obeyed. Against Hall, he argued that the apostles were baptized and the modern church should strive to imitate all that they taught and all that they did. Many of his arguments are rooted in the Reformation principles of worship and the abiding applicability of apostolic precedent. He claimed that closed communion Baptists were simply doing what the early church did. And while baptism is not essential to salvation, It is essential, Kinghorn said, to the scriptural existence of a church and the supper. So baptism is a term of Christian profession set by Christ and therefore was a term of communion. Now many of Kinghorn's other arguments are shared with Booth's work. Hall answered with another book. Kinghorn replied with another book. Both, I think, were longer than the first. But neither broke new ground. Hall's support for open communion, however, led to a dramatic shift in Baptist practice. And I tend to think that this may not have been so much because his arguments were unanswerable I think it was more related to the fact that these arguments came in a very different religious context. Relations between denominations in the early 1800s were changing. The first and second great awakenings had broken down the differences between church groups. Shared social agencies very, very popular, especially in England during the 1800s, had Baptists working shoulder to shoulder with Paedo-Baptists. So why couldn't they sit shoulder to shoulder at the table together, was the thought. Even Charles Spurgeon, one of the last English particular Baptists of the day, held to a modified form of open communion. That is, at his Church, you could receive a ticket to communion without being baptized. But you could only do it once or twice. Then you either had to join the tabernacle through baptism, biblical immersion, or you needed to find another church. Although these debaters had disagreed with each other, as we said, they were all of the same denomination. They lived in the same house. But this changed in the 1840s. The tensions between advocates of the two positions grew so strong that some English Baptists formed new associations based on closed communion. They were called strict Baptists, among other names, no longer was believing in immersion as scriptural baptism enough. Later in the century came liberalism and the loss of confessional particular Baptist identity. General and particulars merged into one body, all of that affected by the downgrade movement. Many of the strict Baptists turned to forms of hyper-Calvinism and they had reputations for being exclusive and small and, frankly, emphasizing doctrinal oddities in many cases. And so closed communion's dominance faded away in England in the 1800s. It lasted longer in the U.S., especially in the South. That brings us to the 1900s. The English strict Baptist continued to practice closed communion into the 1900s, as did many Southern Baptists. But when, in the second half of the century in the United States, the particular Baptists were resurrected as Reformed Baptists, they were almost all closed membership and open communion. That is, they required immersion for membership, but not to come to the table. If I may speak from my own experience, I've been a part of eight Reformed Baptist churches since 1975, and all have been of this closed membership, open communion variety of one type or another. Well, that brings me to my four lessons, what our brother called relevancy. First, recognize that this debate is likely to continue as long as there are Baptist churches. This is no fad subject. It is a doctrinal and practical question inescapable among churches that believe in a regenerate membership and baptism as a duty that follows faith. The question of the relation of baptism to the Lord's table is natural and necessary to being a Baptist. So recognize that you will believe and practice something in regard to this issue. If you are attempting to be a Reformed Baptist at any level, Realize that the entire reason for your separation from other Bible-believing churches is a differing doctrine of the church and baptism. So be ready to study your Bibles and history and seek a God-pleasing practice. And don't be too surprised if a brother you highly esteem on other subjects disagrees with you, I mean, is wrong on this subject. It's been debated for almost 400 years. That's likely to continue. A second lesson. Please decide your views based on scriptural arguments, not on men's personal strengths and weaknesses. I mean this. Just because many of the English strict Baptists in the later 1800s were hyper-Calvinists isn't a reason to discard this view of theirs. Nor because some of the adherents of open communion had dangerous doctrinal errors isn't a reason by itself to ignore their view. Don't study the men. Study their arguments. Test them against scripture and do all of this. Do I need to say this? Of course I do. Do it all in an attitude of humility and love. William Kiffin and Abraham Booth, if you read their writings on this subject, exhibit these traits very well. even as they strongly disagreed with their fellow Baptists. I think Spurgeon said we need to be both courteous and candid. There's the balance. Velvet-covered steel, if you will. As Matthew Henry's father Philip said, it's not the actual differences of Christian men that are the mischief, but the mismanagement of those differences. So let us stay calm and prayerful, speaking strong arguments in soft tones. Listen to one another. Actually let him finish his sentence. And then study diligently. How to do this in part? Well, my next point partially answers this. Number three, please see that both sides of the debate have valid concerns. Both sides of the debate, I believe, have valid concerns. Notice I didn't say they were both right. They can't both be right. They may both be wrong, logically, but they both can't be right. However, I really do believe that both sides of the debate have valid concerns. Both sides emphasize important scriptural ideas. Now, whether they're applied correctly in this question of who should come to the table, that's what you and the Holy Spirit and prayer and the Bible and history, you need to decide that. But the open men rightly point us to the truths of the unity of the church and the preeminence of love in morality. That's true. Again, how that applies to the question of the table, that's another matter. The closed men rightly, I believe, point us to the authority and sufficiency of the New Testament and the continuing applicability of the apostolic pattern of church practice. Well, fourth and finally then, let me be so bold or foolish to point you to a few areas that may be helpful in resolving this debate in your own mind. First, I would urge you to study consistency. Study consistency. In my own wrestling on these things, I've often wondered why all of the churches I've attended were very clear about the definition of baptism. until it came to the Lord's Supper. So we said, you must be baptized to join the church. And by baptized, we only meant immersed upon a profession of faith. We didn't mean anything else by baptized when we use that word. You must be baptized to join the church. But then we said, you may come to the table if you are a baptized believer and member of a gospel church. And by that we meant baptized as you define it, not as we define it. It seems to me we must be consistent in our meaning and use in this. I'm not saying that being consistent will by itself answer the question of open or closed communion. But can we come up with a good scriptural reason to suddenly not mean the same thing by the word baptism? Does intention or sincerity in the worshiper at the table matter at all in deciding this? Does it really make sense to have closed membership and an open table? Is this a place where consistency matters? Or does it not in this? Is it consistent on some other basis? I think these thoughts merit consideration, consistency. And secondly, I think we need to study the categories of natural and positive law, or moral and ceremonial, if you will. Again, it seems to me that we have to clearly think through what kind of law baptism and the supper are and what that means about how they are practiced and how they relate to each other. I mean, historically, Baptists have said there aren't modes of baptism. Immersion is baptism. And that's because there isn't any wiggle room Baptism is determined only by the word of God. And even deductions are out of bounds in positive worship practices. The open party urges the broad moral law of love as the basis of their practice. The closed party urges the narrower application that comes with positive law. How do each of these play in the sacraments? What does it mean for deciding the question of who should be accepted at the Lord's Supper? Brothers, I leave all of that with you. That is what I have. And our time, I think, is up.