Quote 3380
Firstly, our brothers have an aversion to the name "Mass" and prefer to call it the "Lord's Supper," which has long been called "Mass" in the Roman church. Although we do not wish to quarrel with anyone over words, we are inclined to reconcile ourselves with those who agree with us that such words cause offense, hatred, and discord, through which Christian faith and love are damaged, as stated in 1 Timothy 6. Nevertheless, we must confess that it is more Christian and certain to use the name given by Christ our Lord Himself, as the Scripture provides it, with which such things can have no inherent association. Specifically, I mean the term "Missa," which we call "Mass" in German; it is said to be derived from the Hebrew word "mas," meaning a required offering or tribute, hence an offering. This is also found in the fifth book of Moses (Deuteronomy 16:10), and therefore, the Mass is considered an abomination to godliness when the Lord's Supper is held to be an offering.
Martin Bucer
https://reformedbooksonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Bucer-Grounds-and-Reasons-from-Scripture-for-the-Changes-about-the-Lords-Supper-called-the-Mass-Baptism-Feast-Days-and-Images.pdfOther Quotes from the Author & Topic
He who comes to the Lord's table with faith in Christ, may confidently expect to have his faith increased by receiving the bread and wine. But he who comes without faith has no right to expect a blessing. Empty he comes to the ordinance and empty he will go away.https://gracegems.org/Ryle/l22.htm
The Lord's Supper is the most spiritual ordinance ever instituted. Here we have to do more immediately with Christ. In prayer we draw near through Christ; in this ordinance we become one with Him. In the word preached we hear of Christ; in the Supper we feed on Him.
The ordinances are the chariot in which Christ rides, the lattice through which He looks forth and shows His smiling face; here Christ displays the banner of love (Song 2:4). The Lord's Supper is nothing else but a pledge and earnest of that eternal communion the saints shall have with Christ in heaven. Then He will take the spouse into His bosom. If Christ be so sweet in an ordinance, when we have but short glances and dark glimpses of Him by faith, oh then how delightful and ravishing will His presence be in heaven when we shall see Him face-to-face and be forever in His loving embraces?
Remember in particular the love of Jesus Christ, as God-man, in giving Himself for us. This love is frequently proposed to us with what He did for us, and it is represented peculiarly in this ordinance: "Who loved me and gave Himself for me," says the apostle. Faith will never be able to live upon the last expression "gave Himself for me" unless it can rise up to the first, "who loved me." Who "loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood," etc. (Rev. 1:5–6).
There are three ways whereby God represents Christ to the faith of believers. The one is by the word of the gospel itself, as written; the second is by the ministry of the gospel and preaching of the word; and the third by this sacrament, wherein we represent the Lord's death to the faith of our own souls.
The sacrament of the Lord's Supper and the very point of death require equal seriousness. A man's spirit should be as deeply solemn and composed at the Lord's Table as upon a deathbed. We should go to that ordinance as if we were then going into another world.
Remembrance, properly, is the return of the mind to an object about which it hath been formerly conversant, and it may so return to a thing it hath conversed with before two ways: speculatively and transiently, or affectionately and permanently. A speculative remembrance is only to call to mind the history of such a person and His sufferings, that Christ was once put to death in the flesh. An affectionate remembrance is when we so call Christ and His death to our minds as to feel the powerful impressions thereof upon our hearts.
The Scriptures of God are written for all believers; all believers have the Spirit of Christ, by whom one understands the Scriptures. https://reformedbooksonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Bucer-Grounds-and-Reasons-from-Scripture-for-the-Changes-about-the-Lords-Supper-called-the-Mass-Baptism-Feast-Days-and-Images.pdf
it is indeed a great grace and blessing of God that He sets pious princes over us; just as it is a great and grievous plague when He allows godless children and fools to rule, as is written in various passages of Scripture, Isaiah 3 and 32. https://reformedbooksonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Bucer-Grounds-and-Reasons-from-Scripture-for-the-Changes-about-the-Lords-Supper-called-the-Mass-Baptism-Feast-Days-and-Images.pdf
Citizens are not governed for their good and for the true glory of the supreme King when the secular authorities do not rule according to the divine Law and are not set to observe it themselves. For where God is not recognized and obedience to Him is not required before all things, there peace is not peace, justice is not justice, and that which should be profitable brings injury instead.
If you immediately condemn anyone who doesn't quite believe the same as you do as forsaken by Christ's Spirit, and consider anyone to be an enemy of truth who holds something false to be true, who, pray tell, can you still consider a brother? I for one have never met two people who believed exactly the same thing. This holds true in theology as well.
Myriads of members of Christian churches never go to the Lord's table. They would be ashamed perhaps to be known as open breakers of the ten commandments. Yet they are not ashamed of breaking a plain command of Christ!https://gracegems.org/Ryle/l22.htm
The bread that the believer eats at the Lord's table, is intended to remind him of Christ's body given to death on the cross for his sins. The wine that he drinks, is intended to remind him of Christ's blood shed to make atonement for his transgressions. The whole ordinance was meant to keep fresh in his memory the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and the satisfaction which that sacrifice made for the sin of the world.https://gracegems.org/Ryle/l22.htm
May the Lord grant the shepherds of his people the gift of not wanting to seem wiser than God, or more clement and humane, so that they may at length see what a pleasing sacrifice it is to God and how necessary and how effective a remedy against the deadly disease of mankind it is to impose just punishments on godless, criminal, and wicked men.
But since no one can describe an approach more equitable and wholesome to the commonwealth than that which God describes in his law, it is certainly the duty of all kings and princes who recognize that God has put them over his people that they follow most studiously his own method of punishing evildoers.
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