Proposition 4

All Christians are members of the household or family of God, are called and constituted a holy and royal priesthood, and may, therefore, bless God for the Lord's table, its bread, and cup — approach it without fear and partake of it with joy as often as they please, in remembrance of the death of their Lord and Savior.

The different clauses of this proposition we shall support in order — 'all Christians are members of the family or household of God:'10

'But Christ is trusted as a Son over his own household; whose household we are, provided we maintain our profession and confident hope unshaken to the end;' — 'are called and constituted a holy and royal priesthood.'11 You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual temple, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.' In the 9th verse of the same chapter he says, 'But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood;' and this is addressed to all the brothers and sisters scattered in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

May not, then, holy and royal priests thank God for the Lord's table, its bread, and cup of wine? May they not, without a human priest to consecrate the way for them, approach the Lord's table and handle the bread and cup? If the common priests did not fear to approach a golden table, and to place upon it the loaves of the presence; if they did not fear to take and eat the consecrated bread, because they were priests according to the flesh — shall royal priests fear, without the intervention of human hands, to approach the Lord's table and partake of one loaf? If they should, they do not know how to appreciate the consecration of Jesus, nor how to value their high calling and exalted designation as kings and priests to God. And may we not say, that he who is invested with a little clerical authority, derived only from 'the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition,' borrowed from the Romanists, who says to them, 'stand by, I am holier than you' — may we not say that such a one is worse than Diotrephes, who sought preeminence, because he desecrates the royal priesthood of Jesus Christ, and calls him common and unclean, who has been consecrated by the blood of the Son of God? Such impiety can only be found among those who worship the beast, and who have agreed that no one shall buy or sell except those who receive a mark on their foreheads, and letters patent in their hands. But allow common sense to whisper a word into the ears of priests' "laymen," but Christ's 'royal priests.' Do you not thank God for the cup while the priest stands by the table; and do you not handle the bread and cup when they come to you? And would not your thanksgiving have been as acceptable, if the human mediator had not been there, and your participation as well pleasing to God, and as comforting to yourself, if you had been the first to handle the bread or the cup, as when you are the second, or the fifty-second, in order of location? Let reason answer these two questions, and see what comes of the haughty assumptions of your Protestant clergy!! But this only by the way.

I trust it is clear that the royal priesthood may approach the Lord's table without fear, since they are consecrated to serve by a blood far superior to that which consecrated the fleshly priesthood, as the Lord's table, covered with the sacred emblems of the sacrifice of the Lord himself, is superior to the table which held only the twelve loaves of the presence; and as they are, to say the least, called by as holy and divine an election, and are as chosen a race of priests, as were those descended from the tribe of Levi.