Almighty everlasting covenant God, Father, Son, and Spirit, in whose name we have been baptized, we thank you for your goodness and your mercy. And Lord God, we ask now that the time at our disposal, less than we thought it would be, may be stretched by the powerful work of your Holy Spirit, so that we may adequately address this issue, which is leading to a lot of friction in churches, not only in the United States, but also in Europe and just beginning to cause a little bit of friction even in Australia, so that those of us who love your word and the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is quite clear on this subject, may have fresh courage to stand up as ministers of the word and sacraments according to our glorious Calvinistic Biblical Reformed tradition. We ask this for Jesus' sake. Amen. Let me begin then in first just reading the latter part of the handout that you already have. Students should understand in advance, first of all, that family worship is grounded in the joint daily worship of spouses together, so that covenant children are exposed to family worship from their very conceptions onward. Second, infant baptism signifies and seals regeneration and not subsequent conversion. Third, one's first communion at teenage signifies and seals conversion and not prior regeneration. Fourth, the sacrament of communion replaces that of the Passover, not that of circumcision. No females and no pre-teenagers ever partook of the Passover until so deformed by post-Christian liberal Judaism from about 200 A.D. onward. Also that the strictly Hebrew Essenes, as do the Jewish Karaites to this very day, restricted their Passovers to their post-adolescent males after prior catechization terminating in their bar mitzvah not before age thirteen, and seventh and last that modern Peter Communionists, apparently more mature than the adolescent Jesus himself, who never partook of the Passover, it would seem, until his twelfth or thirteenth year, having exchanged classic Calvinism for the heresies of the Greek and the Oriental so-called Orthodox churches, have thereby, to that extent, left the Protestant Reformation. That's the thesis that I will attempt to defend this afternoon. I could do one of two things at this point. I could read you a summary of one of my doctorates that I wrote on the subject of Peter Communions, and indeed against it, but perhaps because of the exigencies of the time I will rather speak impromptuly and then we can take whatever questions you have as well as we're able. First of all, it seems to me, with Professor Hermann Barfinck and Kuyper, that even if Adam had never sinned, he, as the head of his household, would have brought gifts to God, sacrifices, whether bloody or unbloody, on every Sabbath to God before the fall, even if the fall had not taken place. Now, admittedly, that's a little speculative, but nevertheless I do agree with Barfinth when he makes that claim. That would then explain why, immediately after the fall, we are told that at the end of the days, Mekates Yanim, Cain and Abel, for two very different reasons, both brought of their to the Lord, one wholeheartedly and the other formalistically. That would further explain why, after the exodus from the ark, Noah, as another head of household, mature male, again brought sacrifices to Jehovah as a gift of the various clean animals that he had. to the glory of God. Now, what I'm saying up to this point is that those who bring these kind of gifts to the Lord, of which the Passover, I believe, is a later, further development, are not immature children, nor are they women. The gift is brought to the Lord, the act of liturgical giving of the sacrifice, as it were, is performed by either the male head of the house or, alternatively, by such males as have reached an age of maturity. I do not believe, as some do, that Cain and Abel were little boys at the time when Abel was killed. It seems to me that they were both mature and certainly one of them of a marriageable age when this happened, if you read it in context. So that, if I'm right in what I've said, the presumption thus far is that the head of the household, or alternatively, a mature male, which I shall later define as someone who has reached the age of puberty and been knowledgeably catechized, brought these sacrifices, these offerings, to God. I think you'll see that that is so if you further look at the history of sacrifice throughout the rest of the book of Genesis. the way in which Abraham brought sacrifice, for example, and Isaac and Jacob. Incidentally, have you noticed in that great text in Genesis chapter 14, just before it says that Ana and Momre were confederates with Abraham, note the word confederate, very important word, it further says that all of the, and the Hebrew says, catechized servants in the household were involved. in that armed conflict, obviously involving only mature males. And the catechized mature males, again, derived from the root of the Hebrew verb kanuk, which means to catechize, from which the word enoch is derived. Same word used there in Genesis 14. And then, after that victory described in Genesis 14, you will remember that Melchizedek, King of Salem, comes forth and gives Abraham bread and wine, which although not clearly and definitely foreshadowing the Holy Communion, which is what we really need to talk about, nevertheless, and in the opinion of several patristic fathers, does anticipate communion so that Holy Communion is to some extent an extension of what happened at that time. involving, you see, mature males and catechized people. The problem, of course, with Peter Communion is it purports to admit the covenant child to the table without catechism, which I think is a major problem. I think the passage of scripture that we need to wrestle with the most is Exodus chapter 12. And I believe this really is the locus classicus, the place that we've got to go to, to dig our teeth into it, to find out whether we should or should not be admitting either sucklings or barely weaned or just weaned small toddlers of the Covenant to the Lord's table, and in this case to its predecessor, the Passover, yes or no. I need not remind you that the Lord's Supper in the New Testament seems to replace the Passover, and is so stated to replace the Passover in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and by implication chapter 11, in much the same way that Colossians chapter 2 clearly states that baptism has replaced the other Old Testament of circumcision. Perhaps I can just say at that point, before we go back to the institution of the Passover, that there's a very important parallel between circumcision and baptism on the one hand, and the Passover and Holy Communion on the other hand. And it's vital that we see this. The parallel is this, that circumcision was intended to be administered once only, and never to be repeated. By the very nature of the sacrament, once the foreskin has been removed, re-circumcision is impossible. So one cannot operate re-baptistically in the Old Testament in respect of circumcision. It's not possible. Therefore one would presume in the carryover of that general principle the irrepeatability of the sacrament of initiation, circumcision, that the same would hold true in respect of baptism. and I believe it does, so that baptism is to be administered but once and never to be repeated further. Inasmuch as the Old Testament clearly states that the child of the covenant shall be circumcised when eight days old, and that that becomes normative after the first or second generation of adult converts have been engrafted into the covenant of grace, one can similarly anticipate the likelihood of it being the same in respect of baptism, and of course that is so. The apostles go out and they baptize those that profess faith in Christ, namely adults, but then if there are children present with those adults, they too are baptized, but after a generation of two of those churchfolks, we find adult baptism becoming the rarity and infant baptism becoming the norm. So too it was back in Old Testament days in respect of circumcision. I would further allege that circumcision in Old Testament days and baptism in New Testament days are the sign and seal of regeneration and not of post- regenerational conversion, actually so stated in the Westminster Confession, so that baptism and circumcision on the one hand are not signifying and sealing the same salvific reality, namely regeneration, as is the post-baptismal second sacrament Namely, the frequentative sacraments of Passover, on the one hand, as replaced by the Lord's Supper, on the other hand. Passover and the Lord's Supper are not signifying and sealing regeneration. They are signifying and sealing post-regenerational conversion, which is something else. That's why the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 10, Paragraph 3 says, Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated by the Holy Spirit. It doesn't say they're converted, but they are regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, they cannot possibly go to heaven if they die in infancy without first being regenerated. But who would claim that that infant dies converted, and particularly that the infant has been catechized and has been made a profession of faith before dying? That's not the case. Of course, if that infant does not die in infancy, but lives longer, then we must expect and indeed press for a decision in the Calvinistic sense of the word, a conversion experience, a profession of conversion, and an adequate intellectual knowledge of what needs to be involved in moving from what the first sacrament of initiation signified in infancy toward what the second sacrament, the sacrament of maturity, the Lord's Supper must signify. And so too I would say that just as the Lord's Supper, like the Passover, is a frequentative ordinance, that is to say not like circumcision or baptism to be administered once and for all and that's it, but to be re-administered often at frequent interviews whether, and this we won't discuss today, on an annual, semi-annual, quarterly, weekly, monthly, or hourly basis, as does Rome teach, 5 a.m. mass, 6 a.m. mass, 7 a.m. mass, in its further progression. We'll leave aside the matter of frequency, how often and just agree with one another that God wants us to be baptized but once, but go to the Lord's Supper many times. But I would say that each time before people go to the Lord's Supper, Only those who have professed conversion, not just regeneration, but professed conversion, should ever be welcomed at the Lord's table. But not only that, but those who have done that need to be further at peace with God, and to have freshly reexamined their consciences, and have been instructed to have done that before they come to the Lord's Supper for the second or the third time. Because it's a sign and seal of conversion, and there is a sense in which Although you have a first conversion, the very act of conversion, too, is frequentative, which is why Jesus says to the already converted Peter, perhaps a little backslidden, Simon, Simon, Satan has desire to sift you like wheat, but when you are converted, meaning reconverted, you shall strengthen your brethren. And so, too, in respect to those backslidden churches, no doubt of church people, many of whom were regenerate, but to the whole congregation, it is stated in the first three chapters of Revelation, repent. So that God's people who have repented need to be urged to repent all the time, which is why Reformed theology speaks of regeneration as a once and for all irrepeatable act, to which baptism points, but conversion as a continuing experience that constantly needs to be repeated. So that every time I get on the pulpit, talking to people that I know belong to the Lord, and have, if you like, already made the decision for the Lord, I urge them not to come to Christ to be justified, I presuppose that has happened, but very definitely to come afresh to Christ and to say farewell to all of their fresh sins and to reconsecrate themselves to Christ, and this in the Bible is also called conversion. And I believe that the Holy Communion, while not itself converting, nevertheless properly used with the necessary safeguards, is a very good framework to bring about the ongoing reconversion of those who have already professed faith in Christ, which in my opinion excludes small children. Okay, that wasn't the message, that was the background, that's the introduction. Now let me jump in where I think we've got to understand exactly what the Bible says, and that is in Exodus chapter 12. Because in Exodus chapter 12, we have the birth of the Old Testament people of God, the initiation of the Hebrew calendar, but also, and most importantly, the initiation of the Passover. You will notice at the beginning of Exodus chapter 12, it distinctly says that the Passover is to be used by every man according to his eating. And part of the debate going on between Peter Communionists and historic anti-Peter Communionist Calvinists rests on the meaning of the word ishver. The Peter Communionist says that the word ishver means anyone. So the meaning would be, anyone, including the children, are to come to the Passover within the covenant people. But I would deny that ish in that context has that meaning. In the first place, the word ish itself, while it's true, sometimes, very occasionally, can mean a person regardless of age, or even regardless of gender, normatively and normally means a male to the exclusion of a female, and indeed a mature male to the exclusion of an immature male. For the word ish is derived from the verb oosh, and oosh means to have virility. Or to put it a little more clearly, it means not only a person who is masculine, but a person who, being masculine, has reached puberty, the age at which the beard begins to grow. I'll say something about that a little later. So if I'm right on this, and I believe I am, what it's stating in Exodus chapter 12 is that the Passover lamb is to be slaughtered for every mature male who has reached puberty, and by implication, priorly been both circumcised and catechized, and not for any women in Israel, and not for any pre-puberty males. or females within Israel. Now the next verse after that, I believe it's Exodus 12 verse 4, further goes on to state that in the event that there's not enough in one home, then it's fine for them to go share it with the family next door. That too has confused many people. Again, the Peter Communionist says, well that means that you've only got three people in one family, say a man, the wife, and the baby. But next door there's a family with seven, so let's get together and slaughter just one Passover lamb for the lot. Now, the degree of truth in that is that there must indeed be ten people present, according to the Talmudic understanding of these passages, and I would not discount the Talmud altogether. In Mattis Christological, the Talmud is very unsatisfactory, that we agree upon. But as far as the exegesis of that portion of the Old Testament that was inscripturated before the incarnation of our Lord, there is some value, and occasionally even great value, in the comments and the glosses of the various pre-Christian rabbis as to the meaning. And they said that an official liturgical worship service of ancient Israel could only take place if there was a Midian. M-I-N-Y-A-N. And a minyan to this very day, even in anti-Christian Judaism, means a group of people regarded as covenant people where there are at least ten mature males. You don't have a minyan if you have a gathering of 99 Jewesses, 199 Jewish infants, but only nine Jewish males who have not yet read their Bar Mitzvah at the time that their beard begins to grow, and affirm that they will defend the faith of Old Testament Israel. You may have a gathering, but its character, say the rabbis, is not that of an official worship service, and further, that the Passover cannot be celebrated. In such a gathering you must have at least ten mature males present. And I think that's a very, very important statement. Let me just say on this point, before we go any further, that a little further on in the book of Exodus, chapter 18, where God gives his wonderful structure for the setting up of Presbyterian church government, elders over thousands, over tens, over fifties, etc., is built on the same decimal principle. Ideally, one of the jobs of the ruling elder must be to be put in charge of the optimal number of ten families, each of which ten families are under the control of a mature, circumcised, or in New Testament times, baptized, catechized adult male. He has ten visiting points in his ward, as it were. And he reports back to the session about how things are going in the spiritual health there. That principle clearly comes from Exodus chapter 18 and must be presupposed a little earlier in Exodus 12 as far as the Passover is concerned. Have you noticed in Exodus 12, the roundabout verse 20 at the top of my head, there is specific reference to the elders in connection to the painting of the blood on the threshold of the doorpost? So many people read the Passover there as an institution, as if it's simply a family Not so. According to the text, it's one that involves the elders, that they are to give oversight in that Passover, whether it's over one big family with more than ten adult males, or whether it's a collection of two or three or more families to get up to the minimum of the required ten males, as the case may be. Not only that, but as Calvin points out in his Institutes, when you get to chapter 12 and verses 26-27, I think it is, at the top of my head, you find the father, according to the text of Exodus, entering into a dialogue, obviously with a child. And there the child says, what do you people mean or intend by this? And the father, or the mature male replies, this is because the Lord saved us and we left Egypt, etc. Now notice the way in which the question of the child is couched. He's not asking why are we doing this, which indeed would presuppose the participation of the asking child in the ordinance. But the infallible word of God, every jot and every tickle of which is important, so I'm that ye is very important, and we may not slur over ye as if it were to mean us. Ye means ye, not us. The question, why are y'all doing this, not why are wall or all of us doing this. The one that asks the question, while indeed present at that Passover, is not himself mandicating, is not himself eating the bread and the flesh and drinking of the wine. He's there, he sees what's happened, but he's asking questions. And by the way, it's a question and answer catechetical context. And there's no evidence in the text whatsoever that even after the adult then gives the explanation, that the little one nods assent and is thereby immediately permitted to join them. And so it should be in a good Presbyterian church today. Even at communion services, and I myself favor quarterly communion, which I won't go into that now, I'll just state my position, the position of Knox. And the way I've raised my own children is always, from the time they were very tiny, taken to the communion service, but be absolutely horrified if any of the elders or whoever else is distributing the bread and the wine were to have attempted to give communion symbols to my not yet sufficiently catechized daughters. As a matter of fact, my younger daughter only became a communicant when she was 18, because although she was a believer, she really did not think she was ready to take that mature vow until that late age. And I had a fight against my own minister on that in Australia, who had a somewhat laxer view of what was involved in catechism, but thank God we have not yet got this problem of paedocommunism in Australia. It's just beginning. It's very rare in Australia to find any child of the covenant come to the Lord's table in a Presbyterian church before they're sixteen. Personally, I think the age should be thirty. the catechism starting at 10, for reasons that I may or may not get around to tell you later, but child communion and particularly infant communion there is unthinkable at this point in time, because it's understood the person needs to be catechized, and not just by the head of the family, but by the elders, because the elders are in superintendence at the Passover and later the Communion. I know some Peter Communionists say, well, if in the opinion of the head of the house, he thinks that the child, but that's not the issue. The issue is what sayeth the elders, not what sayeth the head of the house. Because the Passover is not a household ordinance, such as daily family worship, it's a church ordinance. and therefore is to be administered under superintendence of the elders who are to make quite sure that those coming to the table are ready for it, and not to allow people to come to the table who are not ready for it or who have apostatized to such an extent that they should be warned to stay away from this holy bread or otherwise eat and drink damnation unto themselves. This is a serious thing. If you love your child, you don't put your child at a tender age in that kind of danger. After that question and answer, why are y'all doing this, but we little ones asking the question are not, but why are you adult males doing it? The further statement, that that day about 600,000 people left Egypt, and now get this, excluding the women and the toddlers. In other words, the Holy Writer and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is clearly discriminating there in verse 37 I think it is. of Exodus chapter 12 between mature males on the one hand, who I will say did use the Passover, and the women who did not use the Passover, and the toddlers who did not use the Passover. Now, if toddlers are in a separate category to women and to mature males, how much more the pre-toddler in this. And then at the very end of that very important chapter, Exodus 12, the further statement is made that the foreigner that comes to live amongst the covenant people may, perhaps, be invited to the Passover, provided he submits to circumcision, and by implication, to instruction, as brought out by the verb there, which means get hold of him, bring him nearer, to initiate him further. Very important statement. There at the end of the chapter, I think it's verse 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, the end of Exodus chapter 12. No uncircumcised person may use the Passover, and that's why I say on the basis of the word of God that no woman ever partook of the Passover in Old Testament times. Now I know later Judaism fell into that heresy, but that was late, 200 A.D. way after the whole canon of scripture had been completed. If you can circumcise a woman, then you can begin to explain to me how that circumcised woman, Israelites, could then have partaken of the Passover at its initiation. If women are uncircumcisable, and of course they are, then it must follow that in biblical times, as opposed to post-Christian, anti-Christian, Judaical times, Israelitic women, mature women, were not admitted to the Lord's table, to the Passover at that time. And such males as were admitted need to be first circumcised, second catechized, and third officially admitted. Now, to jump over a little further, I don't have to remind you that it is the and Talmudic understanding that a young Jewish male that was to be circumcised in infancy was regarded as becoming a mature son of the law, ba mitzvah in Aramaic, when he had at approximately the beginning of adolescence, Calvin says about ten years of age, started on a program of church-directed, not family-directed, church-directed catechization about the duties which every adult male would be expected to perform, and then it was only when he was 13 years and one day old that he was allowed publicly to profess his faith in the God of Israel, and I would say admitted to the Passover. And that's the basis of the position which I would take, which I believe with all my heart, to be the historic, biblical, early patristic—early patristic prior to Cyprian—and reformational, both Lutheran and Calvinistic position of anti-Peter Communionism. In this context, I believe we need to approach Proverbs 22.6, train the child in the way in which he should go, and then, when he's old, he will not depart from it. We need to take a very deep look at that in the Hebrew, and what it actually says in the Hebrew is this, catechize, interesting word, chanok, catechize a lad in the way that he should walk, and once his beard begins to grow, he will not depart from that way. It uses the Hebrew word yazkim there, from which we get the word zakim, a beard. As you know, an elder must either have a beard or must be able to grow a beard, which is why women must never be permitted to become elders, unless they be bearded ladies at a circus perhaps. But the same applies to unqualified young males. If they don't yet have the ability to grow a beard, then their catechising process has not yet been completed. So the meaning of that very important verse in Proverbs is, catechize a land in the way in which he should go, and then, once his beard begins to grow, that is to say, once he reaches puberty, he will not depart from the way in which he's been catechized. And yet so often people read that as if it's saying, well, as long as you're getting baptized and then it's in the Presbyterian church, it doesn't matter how ungodly he lives for the next fifty years, he's certain to come back to the Lord in his deathbed. That's not what it means. I would say that's a very important consideration. And now when we come to the New Testament, very quickly, we need to see that the Lord Jesus Christ, who obviously had more intelligence than any other human being that had ever lived, circumcised in infancy, is only stated in Luke chapter 2 to have come to the Passover, which has now been replaced by the Lord's Supper, we're told when he was twelve. When he was twelve, Jesus accompanied Joseph and Mary in going up to the feast. We are not told that when he was twelve he actually partook, but we are told one very interesting thing, and that is But when the rest of the people went back with their caravan, they discovered Jesus was missing. So they went back to Jerusalem to find out where he was. And they discovered Jesus there. What was he doing? Asking questions and giving answers to, and no doubt also being asked questions by, and giving an account of what he had learned at that Passover to the teachers, the instructors. who were astonished at his answers. But he's 12 years old, and I would say, with many archaeologists who've checked this out, that that probably means that Jesus was undergoing his final catechization at age 12, during Passover time, with a view the next year, for Passover, you know, was an annual ordinance, being admitted at age 13 and one day, or more, as a professing, first-time communicant member of Israel. So I think that that too is very important. Coupled to that the fact that from what we do know of archaeology, the Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls and other similar uninspired but historically important writings really do seem to imply that the Essenes never admitted their young males to the Passover until after profession of faith and the attainment of twenty years of age, which may be why the Dutch Reformed churches in Holland in happier days liked to delay the admission of their children of the covenant until the age of majority. I don't believe that that is entirely biblical, but it's probably best to safeguard too much than to lower the standard of the Lord's table too much. On the other hand, the Pharisees, according to the Talmud, Abot 5.21 I think it is, clearly states the various ages at which the children of the Pharisees were trained certain things, and make it clear that it was at age 30 that they took upon themselves all of the mature obligations of an adult male Israelite. In this context, before we leave archaeology, I must tell you that in my considerable studies of ancient Celtic and medieval Anglo-Saxon history, I found exactly the same thing. If you read Tacitus, for example, in his magnificent book, Germania, on the customs of the ancient Germans, who, unlike the Romans, hated adultery and had a very high morality, very interesting problem from the point of view of common grace, but let's not get into that. You will see that a young German was never given his spear, according to Tacitus, until he was thirteen, teenage. Now he's a man, now he's to defend himself, now he's ready to take up his position in the armies of Germany, Anglo-Saxons. You see the same thing with the pre-Saxon ancient British council. You see the same thing in the later legislation in England of Alfred the Great, of King Cnut, and of one or two of those other kings that lived between about the 7th and the 10th century AD. The age of majority for the Anglo-Saxon is thirteen, teenage, then he's to be a man and to stand on his own feet. So I would say that this is very interesting. Not only that, but even if you go to pagan cultures, such as that of the Australian Aboriginals, you will see that they are, though born and raised in the tribe, they are finally initiated at puberty ceremonies, where they have to take their oaths, often blood-curdling oaths, of allegiance, now to be men and sometimes also women, adult men and women in the tribe and to serve the tribe. Now, however perverted and mangled that practice is, and indeed is, surely perversion is only possible if you have something good at the beginning which you can pervert. So we need to see that paganism is only possible because it perverts some pre-pagan reality. For that matter, sin is only possible if you twist some virtue. Adultery is only possible if you misuse the God-given sex organs for another purpose. Theft is only possible if you misuse the hand to steal which God has given you priorly, before theft, to subjugate the earth as to Adam. So putting all of this evidence together, further building brick, it begins to seem to me even more clearly that quite apart from being catechised and quite apart from being circumcised or baptised as an infant, an extra requirement for admission to the Lord's table is the reaching of the age of puberty. Now I'm nearly through with this evidence and then maybe I'll sit down and try to get something to eat and we can take some questions. But if you now go with all of that in the background to 1 Corinthians chapter 5 I think it is, The statement is made, from that of verse 6 to 8 I think it is, that we are to get rid of the yeast which has crept into the Christian Church. The context is such an immorality that is broken out in the congregation of Corinth, as would be unheard of even amongst the pagans. Namely, that a man takes the the wife of his own father, meaning either his own natural mother or his father's other wife, as the case may be. And having disapproved of that horrible incestuous practice that had begun to take root, pagan practice, even in the Church of Corinth, the holy writer moves on and says, get rid of this yeast! Such a person should be delivered over to Satan. so that the Lord may hopefully later save his soul by way of reconversion. And then, for Christ our Passover is slaughtered for his sins. See the connection there? Church discipline, that is to say admission to the Lord's table, or refusal to come to the Lord's table, is to be seen within the context of not committing those kinds of sins, which by the way, is a kind of sin that only a mature male can commit, not an immature male. When you go on a few chapters further in 1 Corinthians, you reach the statement of the man being the head of the woman, and then finally the two sexes leading one another in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, and then the transition to the Lord's table, where we are told very clearly that he who eats or drinks lightly of this food and wine eats and drinks of damnation unto himself. And the implication is very clear and is so understood, especially in Calvinist churches, that even communicants who are living in sin are to be turned away from the Lord's table, how much more those who are not communicants. Let's move back a little and take a look at the elements of the Passover. They are unleavened bread or matzo, hardly a substance you would give to a little suckling that's still being fed only on mother's milk. Second, roast mutton, again a substance that no normal person would dream of giving to an unweaned baby. And wine. Many would say alcoholic wine. And I would hope we would not want to be giving alcoholic wine to little children. Although I was in a church many years ago, when to my horror I saw alcoholic wine at the Lord's table being poured down the throat of a one and a half year old baby. It was a Presbyterian church and ended up with a row between me as the visiting preacher and one of the elders in the session. But really the very elements involved in the Passover are not suitable for a very young child. Additional piece of information which I just throw in for argument's sake at that point. Now perhaps I should say a little more about church history. I know that Peter Communionists claim, as one of them did to me in a little bit of a debate, Don't I realise that the great Augustine himself favoured Peter Communion? To which I responded, Augustine does indeed sometimes say that children of the covenant, as children, could be brought to the Lord's table. I concede that. But never without prior catechisation, first point. Second, when did Augustine live? 400 A.D. Third, does he realize that there is no mention whatsoever of this practice of paedocommunion in patristic extent documents prior to Cyprian of Carthage in 250-251 A.D.? Now, paedocommunionists love that reference in Cyprian. to what they call Peter Communionism, but you really need to read Cyprian to see what he says. And remember, this is a first. You can read Athenagoras, you can read Justin Martyr, you can read Tertullian. All of these people before 250, there's no trace of Peter Communion anywhere. The first reference that Peter Communionists claim in post-Apostolic times favours their practice, from which they quite erroneously assume that this presupposes that all the previous patristics also taught it, of which there is absolutely no evidence, is in Cyprian. Now what's the context? It's the Decian Roman pagan persecution of the Church throughout the Mediterranean in 250. And what had happened, according to Cyprian, and he mentions it in One Little Child, and some well-meaning person that was themselves a pagan, during the time of this pagan persecution, no doubt to appease the pagan gods, opened the mouth of this little child, and forced down the throat of this little child, whose Christian parents had been arrested and put somewhere else, some wine that had previously been dedicated to an idol. But this little child, being a child of the covenant, promptly vomited forth this wine that had been rammed down its throat, that had been dedicated to an idol. Friends, if that's all the Peter comedians have got to go by, I think it's pretty slender evidence. Because if anything, it would establish that Peter Communionism is a pagan practice, number one. B, that when given to a child, the child spits it out. And C, there is no evidence in Cyprian that he ever, ever approved of that practice. Next, the next 100, 130 years, there's again very little evidence, almost none, of any kind of Peter Communionism in any shape or form in the Eastern or Western Church. It's true, when you reach Augustine, a lot of things happen with Augustine, the collapse of Rome, the inundation of the Roman Empire with the pagans from the north, all kinds of concessions, rise of baptismal regenerationism, the syncretism between biblical and patristic theology on the one hand and accommodation with paganism on the other hand. So it's perfectly true to allege that from about 450 onward there is a lot of evidence of church children being a given communion right down to the time of the Protestant Reformation. That's true. But what kind of a church was that? I'm saying that the church in its form stage knew nothing of pagan pedocommunism, although pagan rites did. I'm saying that the Church in its deformed state, from about 450 onwards to the Reformation, did know of paedocommunism. And I'm saying that the Church in its next or reformed state knows nothing about paedocommunism. And I'm further alleging that those Calvinists who practice paedocommunism, whether they know it or not, are moving away from the Protestant Reformation with their practice and they're going back to the middle period of the Church's history, the period of the deformation. Even in the period of deformation, Peter Communion was administered a little differently in the West than the way in which it was in the East. In the West, the age at which the, I suppose we can call them covenant children, church children at any rate, were admitted to the Lord's table was generally later. People that were toddlers and above. I was raised in the Roman Catholic faith to start with. I was catechized by nuns when I was seven. I was admitted to the Mass shortly after I was seven. I then understood transubstantiation, so I wouldn't eat and drink of Protestant damnation over my soul. I would understand this really is the blood of Christ and not just wine and bread. I was never given the wine, of course, which is another issue. That's reserved for the priest alone. which may explain why so many priests are alcoholics, but then again, there's another issue. Five o'clock mass, six o'clock mass, seven o'clock mass. Well, there's got to be some compensations if you force celibacy on the clergy. And I suppose that's one of them. At any rate, what I want to say is this. But between the time I became a communicant in the Roman Catholic Church, baptized in infancy, and admitted after catechism to the Roman Catholic table when I was seven, and the time that my father persuaded me to become an atheist like him when I was seven and a half, and you ready for the next? I went to the Catholic conversion of the Lord's table more frequently than I've ever done since my conversion to Protestantism at the age of 21, and I will be 60 at the end of this year. Frequency of communion, young age communion, is absolutely meaningless if it is not coupled with an intelligent understanding of what the Bible says is the significance of it. Praise the Lord that I finally came through and became a Protestant. And I would really existentially like to tell Peter Communists that bringing their own children to the table the way some of them... I know they mean well. I know they're in overreaction against the Baptists. I know they're embarrassed when the Baptist says, well, look, if seeing you people is so smart that you're baptizing babies, why don't you give communion to the babies? So the obliging half-talked Christian says, OK, we'll do that. Instead of saying, oh, wait a minute, baptism and the Lord's Supper point to two different things, one to regeneration, the other to post-regenerational conversion. That's the problem. We have too simplistic a view of the relationship of the two sacraments to one another and what they are supposed to refer to, also in ignorance of Church history. Well now, in the Western Church it was usually toddler communion, and often, thank God, after some little catechising, however inadequate. In the Eastern Church, however, they adopted the model the Baptists would like to see us adopt. before the Baptists will concede we're consistent. So the Eastern practice for many centuries, from about 400 onward, right down to this very day, is to baptize their infant by total immersion, by the way, sometimes named dramatically, shortly after birth, and immediately thereafter, forcing the communion wine and the bread into the mouth of the child, which they call intinction. I am happy to tell you that modern so-called Presbyterian, pseudo-Presbyterian pedocommunists don't want to force. They don't like intention. They've got all kinds of caveats, and actually when you listen more and more to their caveats, you realise that if they're just as consistent, they would ultimately arrive back at our position. But anyway, that's their problem, not mine. Comes the Reformation. The testimony of the Reformed Fathers is absolutely 100% opposed to pedocommunism. The Lutherans never admitted their own children to the Lord's table prior to puberty and prior to extensive Lutheran catechism. Calvin the same. Calvin has a very interesting passage on this toward the end of his Institutes, in which he says in the early church and the patristic church, and by that he means prior to Cyprian when things began to go wrong with this novelty of pedocommunism, this is the way it happened. The child would be baptized in infancy, be raised at home, taken to church, and then as the child was approaching adolescence, this is Calvin's word, not mine, approaching adolescence, the child would be catechized by the bishop, meaning by that, the moderator of the session. I'm sure I believe in parity of elders, but one person has got to be moderator, whoever he is. That then is done, says Calvin, and then This process can begin, says Calvin, a few pages later, when the person is about ten. And it's my thesis, as someone that was finally myself catechized for three years in the Reformed Church, as an adult before I was first admitted to communion, that this too was the practice of the early church. And by the way, if you look into Ambrose and you look into Cyril of Jerusalem and certain other writings, you see this too. A long period of catechism. so that the child of the covenant, when he's come to age of discretion, can get to know enough as to how the Lord is present, and I would say absolutely not in a transubstantiationistic way, and how on earth can a suckling or even a toddler possibly distinguish between transubstantiation Calvinism and Zwinglianism? I don't think it's psychologically possible. You've practically got to reach puberty before you develop that kind of insight into the matter. So, says Calvin, he would like to see this resurrected. Namely, the covenant child begins catechizing at age 10 for three years, and then by the time he reaches puberty, he professes his faith publicly in the Church for the first time and goes to his first communion. By the way, if you look carefully at the last verses of Hebrews chapter 5 and Hebrews chapter 6, you see exactly the same thing. Those of you who by this time should have been teachers need to go back to the milf stage and do not yet progress to solid food, food that is not suitable for infants or even for toddlers. And please read Calvin's commentary on that passage of Hebrews with the same consequence. Look, I am getting hungry now, but just let me cover myself. I will leave this material with you, Dr. Smith, so that you can distribute it, and it will give you a lot more information than I've been able to impart now, and please check it out, and I think you'll see that the things I'm alleging really are so. Be like the Bereans, not like the Thessalonians, to check these things out daily to make sure that they are so. But let me close by saying that I am in pretty good company as to the views that I've been propounding, for I will claim and am prepared to prove a, that the classic Protestantism taught a communion doctrine, and for that matter other doctrines no different than did the patristic church before the rise of Romanism, point one. So that Protestantism is not an innovation, it is the rediscovery of New Testament and patristic theology, but second, to round it off in a Protestant context, I will now allege, and we can talk about it or prove it later if you like, that the following persons clearly took an anti-Peter Communionistic stand. Luther, Calvin, Beezer, Bullinger, all of the reformers at that time, And then later, John Knox, John Bradford, Ames, Perkins, Manton, George Gillespie, Westminster Divines, John Owen, Richard Baxter, followed by all of the New England Puritans of Colonial America, Peter Minowitz up in Dutch Reformed New York, the Cottons, the Cambridge Platform, the Mathers, Stoddart, Edwards, and even the halfway covenant itself. Need I remind you of the Westminster larger catechism? And I hope that we here at least are strict subscriptions, are we not? I said last night to someone I'm a Jutt and Tittle subscriptionist. That upset him. Oh, then you're implying the infallibility of the confessions. I say, no, they're correctable. But until such time as they are corrected by due process of law and amendment, they bind me. I won't defend them. Westminster Larger Catechism questions 167 to 177 rightly states, and I quote, that the Lord's Supper is to be administered only to such as are of years and ability to examine themselves. So you see, not just Calvin and his contemporaries, not just later true Reformed theologians such as Ercinus, Vesicius, Wendelin, and Mark, the Synopsis, Willius, Butzius, Vixius, and many others, Maastricht, Pictet, J. H. Heidegger, Turretin, Samuel Miller, the Hodges, Dabney, Warfield, Kuiper, Barfinck, Dake, Belsma, Louis Berkoff, John Murray, Edmund Clowney, Leonard Coppys, myself, and many others, I think rightly brand Peter Communism as a ritualistic, sacramentalistic innovation. It is foreign to the Word of God. Our Westminster standards condemn it, and so too should we. Thank you, Dr. Smith and brothers and sisters. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. You are welcome to make copies and give them to those in need. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available. free of charge. Thank you. by phone at 780-450-3730 by fax at 780-468-1096 or by mail at 4710-37A Edmonton Alberta, abbreviated capital A, capital B, Canada, T6L3T5. You may also request a free printed catalog. And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart. From his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since He condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to His commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying His word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The Prophet's words, then, are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind, as though he had said that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew.