The Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Divided into three parts, dialogue wiseThe Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Deuided into three partes, dialogue wise

Theophilus. It is very true. But their principal & chiefest profit cometh unto them, because of the dead. And therefore they would no longer permit & suffer, y• it should be lawful & common unto all, as well lay people as clerks, to exercise the office, & to communicate y• one for the other, but it is given unto them alone, as y• most worthiest, judging the other thereof unworthy. From thence are descended ⟨image 192⟩the private and particular masses, in which all they ¹alone do say that do communicate for the quick and the dead. It sufficed them not, to take the office to communicate for the dead, which were absent, but which is more, would also make it in the name of y• living, which are present, as though they rejected them, and judged them excommunicate and unworthy to communicate at the death & passion of Jesus Christ. I demand of thee then Eusebius upon this, where thou hast ever read, that the Christians have used a supper and sacrament vicar, I ²do call the sacrament end the supper vicar, which thou takest for an other alter the imitation of Tertullian, calling vicar baptism, the same of the Corinthians for the dead. ³Canst thou allege unto me one only example taken from the true servants of God. And that fashion to celebrate the supper particularly, is it not a right excommunication, ⁴and not a communion? For hath our Lord Jesus Christ instituted his supper only for the Priests? Would he not that bread, which he distributed unto his Apostles, should be divided and distributed unto his Apostles, should be divided and distributed among them? And that all should drink of that cup and of that wine, which representeth his blood? Wherefore hath he commanded that; but for to give us to understand, that as he gave his body & his blood for the health & salvation of all men, that he would in like manner, that all his elect should be partakers, & that all should communicate with him, in y holy supper, & should be fed & refreshed with his flesh and his blood, through the virtue of his holy spirit? Even as then Jesus Christ was not only delivered unto death for the Priests, but for all the faithful, both generally and particularly, so he would not that there should be but the Priests which should be partakers, but all those for whom and unto whom, he gave it.