Strictures on Dr. John M. Mason’s Plea for Sacramental Communion on Catholic Principles.
James Dodson
1821-James Chrystie.-This book is a polemical defense of the true visible church against Dr. John M. Mason’s Plea for Sacramental Communion on Catholic Principles. Operating within the confessional framework of the Scots and Belgic Confessions—where there are only true churches or false churches, and denominationalism is itself sectarianism—the author demonstrates that Mason’s system dissolves the essential distinction between the two. Mason argues that all professing Christians should be admitted to the Lord’s Supper regardless of doctrinal differences, but the author shows this empties “credible profession” of definable content, misreads Scripture (the Jerusalem Council disowned false teachers, it did not counsel forbearance of error), and contradicts the historic Reformed tradition. Terms of communion are not parochial boundary markers between denominations but the necessary means by which the true church, identified by the pure preaching of the Word, right administration of the sacraments, and faithful exercise of discipline, excludes the false and maintains fidelity to Christ her Head. Mason’s error is not merely that he proposes a minimal creed, but that he destroys the visibility of the true church by admitting to her sacraments those who belong to false churches, thereby making union with Christ’s body a matter of subjective profession rather than objective truth confessed.
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