Matthew 26:26-28

Matthew 26:26-28. And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

Go into any Romish church, and watch the priest’s performance at the altar, and see whether there is the least likeness between that mummery and this divinely appointed ordinance. I can hardly imagine two things which are so widely apart. How did the Lord’s supper ever grow into the mass? It must have taken long years of moss and ivy and lichen and all kinds of clinging things to overgrow the original, natural column which the Saviour set up, and to turn it into that mingle-mangle of which the Romanists and Ritualists think so much. The only safe rule is to keep close to Scripture in everything; for, if you add a little, somebody will add more; and if you alter one thing, the next person will alter another, and, by-and-by, you will not know what the original was. I have seen a peasant, in Italy, wearing a coat of which I believe neither man nor angel could tell which was the material of which it was originally made, for it had been patched so often; and, in like manner, if we did not know what was the original of the mass, it would be impossible for us now to tell, for it has been so patched and mended that it is not at all like the original. Let us, beloved, keep strictly to the letter of God’s Word, and also to the spirit of it, lest we err from the truth as so many others have done.