This silence with respect to any command for any new institution is
considered by the Quakers as a proof, as far as these Evangelists are
concerned, that none was ever intended. For if the sacrament of the
supper was to be such a great and essential rite as Christians make it,
they would have been deficient in their duty, if they had failed to
record it. St. Matthew, who was at the supper, and St. Mark, who heard
of what had passed there, both agree that Jesus used the ceremony of the
bread and the wine, and also that he made an allusion from thence to his
own body and blood; but it is clear, the Quakers say, whatever they
might have heard as spoken by him, they did not understand him as
enjoining a new thing. But the silence of John, upon this occasion, the
Quakers consider as the most impressive in the present case. For St.
John was the disciple, who leaned upon the bosom of Jesus at this
festival, and who of course must have heard all that he said. He was
the disciple again, whom Jesus loved, and who would have been anxious to
have perpetuated all that he required to be done. He was the disciple
again, who so particularly related the spiritual supper which Jesus
enjoined at Capernaum, and in this strong language, that, "except a man
eat his flesh, and drink his blood, he has no life in him."
Notwithstanding this, St.
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