Mr. Spurgeon, as we have seen, permitted unbaptized persons temporarily to partake of the Lord's Supper unchallenged, but if there appeared a disposition to make participation habitual, one of the deacons in a private interview explained Baptist doctrine and urged the duty of baptism. If this advice was not taken, participation in the Lord's Supper naturally ceased. Dr. P. S. Henson proposes a middle path between open and close communion, as follows: “Preach and urge faith in Jesus and obedience to him. Leave choice with participants themselves. It is not wise to set up a judgment-seat at the Lord's table. Always preach the Scriptural order—1. Faith in Jesus; 2. Obedience in Baptism; 2. Observance of the Lord's Supper.” J. B. Thomas: “Objections to strict communion come with an ill grace from pedobaptists who withhold communion from their own baptized, whom they have forcibly made quasi-members in spite of the only protest they are capable of offering, and whom they have retained as subjects of discipline without their consent.”
A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon on Our Denominational Outlook, May 19, 1904—“If I am asked whether Baptists still hold to restricted communion, I answer that our principle has not changed, but that many of us apply the principle in a different manner from that of our fathers. We believe that Baptism logically precedes the Lord's Supper, as birth precedes the taking of nourishment, and regeneration precedes sanctification. We believe that the order of the ordinances is an important point of Christian doctrine, and itself teaches Christian doctrine. Hence we proclaim it and adhere to it, in our preaching and our practice. But we do not turn the Lord's Supper into a judgment-seat, or turn the officers of the church into detectives. We teach the truth, and expect that the truth will win its way. We are courteous to all who come among us; and expect that they in turn will have the courtesy to respect our convictions and to act accordingly. But there is danger here that we may break from our moorings and drift into indifferentism with regard to the ordinances. The recent advocacy of open church-membership is but the logical consequence of a previous concession of open communion. I am persuaded that this new doctrine is confined to very few among us. The remedy for this false liberalism is to be found in that same Christ who solves for us all other problems. It is this Christ who sets the solitary in families, and who makes of one every nation that dwells on the face of the earth. Christian denominations are at least temporarily his appointment. Loyalty to the body which seems to us best to represent his truth is also loyalty to him. Love for Christ does not involve the surrender of the ties of family, or nation, or denomination, but only consecrates and ennobles them.
“Yet Christ is King in Zion. There is but one army of the living God, even though there are many divisions. We can emphasize our unity with other Christian bodies, rather than the differences between us. We can regard them as churches of the Lord Jesus, even though they are irregularly constituted. As a marriage ceremony may be valid, even though performed without a license and by an unqualified administrator; and as an ordination may be valid, even though the ordinary laying-on of hands be omitted; so the ordinance of the Lord's Supper as administered in pedobaptist churches may be valid, though irregular in its accompaniments and antecedents. Though we still protest against the modern perversions of the New Testament doctrine as to the subjects and mode of Baptism, we hold with regard to the Lord's Supper that irregularity is not invalidity, and that we may recognize as churches even those bodies which celebrate the Lord's Supper without having been baptized. Our faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.”On the whole subject, see Madison Avenue Lectures, 217-260; and A. H. Strong, on Christian Truth and its Keepers, in Philosophy and Religion, 238-244.
E. Special objections to open communion.
The advocates of this view claim that baptism, as not being an indispensable term of salvation, cannot properly be made an indispensable term of communion.
Robert Hall, Works, 1:285, held that there can be no proper terms of communion which are not also terms of salvation. He claims that “we are expressly commanded to tolerate in the church all those diversities of opinion which are not inconsistent with salvation.” For the open communion view, see also John M. Mason, Works, 1:369; Princeton Review, Oct. 1850; Bib. Sac., 21:449; 24:482; 25:401; Spirit of the Pilgrims, 6:103, 142. But, as Curtis remarks, in his Progress of Baptist Principles, 292, this principle would utterly frustrate the very objects for which visible churches were founded—to be “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15); for truth is set forth as forcibly in ordinances as in doctrine.
In addition to what has already been said, we reply:
(a) This view is contrary to the belief and practice of all but an insignificant fragment of organized Christendom.
A portion of the English Baptists, and the Free Will Baptists in America, are the only bodies which in their standards of faith accept and maintain the principles of open communion. As to the belief and practice of the Methodist Episcopal denomination, the New York Christian Advocate states the terms of communion as being: 1. Discipleship; 2. Baptism; 3. Consistent church life, as required in the “Discipline”; and F. G. Hibbard, Christian Baptism, 174, remarks that, “in one principle the Baptist and pedobaptist churches agree. They both agree in rejecting from the communion at the table of the Lord, and denying the rights of church fellowship to all who have not been baptized. Valid baptism, they consider, is essential to constitute visible church membership. This also we [Methodists] hold.... The charge of close communion is no more applicable to the Baptists than to us.”