Thursday, March 13, 2008

Form for Excommunications

Calvin's Form for celebrating the Lord's Supper includes the following general excommunication:

We have heard, brethren, how our Lord makes his Supper among his disciples, and thereby shows that strangers - in other words, those who are not of the company of the faithful - ought not to be admitted. Wherefore, in accordance with this rule, in the name and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, I excommunicate all idolaters, blasphemers, despisers of God, heretics, and all who form sects apart to break the unity of the Church, all perjurers, all who are rebellious to parents and to their superiors, all who are seditious, mutinous, quarrelsome, injurious, all adulterers, fornicators, thieves, misers, ravishers, drunkards, gluttons, and all who lead a scandalous life; declaring to them that they must abstain from this holy table, for fear of polluting and contaminating the sacred viands which our Lord Jesus Christ gives only to his household and believers.


Calvin's Tracts, vol 2, trans. Beveridge p120


The BCP also directs the curate that "Briefs, Citations and Excommunications" should be read after the Creed and before the Offertory in the Communion service.

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