The principles of Church communion are so clearly laid down in Scripture, and so distinctly stated in our Standards, that whenever we see such inquiries as above presented, we take it for granted that they come from Congregationalists, who think, in many cases, each particular parish Church may establish its own terms of communion, or from some other source, foreign to our own Church. Knowledge to discern the Lord’s body, faith to feed upon him, repentance, love, and new obedience, are the only conditions of Christian communion which any church on earth has a right to impose. The Lord’s table is for the Lord’s people–and we commit a great sin, if we presume to debar any man, giving credible evidence of being a child of God, from our Christian fellowship. All imposition of other terms, whether relating to unessential doctrines, to slavery, temperance, hymnology, or anything else, is setting ourselves above God in his own house; and that is the vital germ of antichrist.

…It is included in the acknowledgment that a body of Christians is a Church of Christ, that we should commune with its members in public worship and in the sacraments and allow them to commune with us. This follows from the spiritual unity of the Church; from its having the same faith and the same Lord and God, and from the conditions of Church membership being the same for all Churches. A member of the Church at Jerusalem was entitled to the privileges of the Church of Antioch. If he was a Christian in one place, he was no less a Christian in another, and the rights of a Christian belonged to him wherever he went. It is obvious that this principle, although true in itself, is limited in its practical application. There may be something in the mode of conducting public worship or in the administration of the sacraments that hurts the consciences of other Christians, and prevents this freedom of communion in Church ordinances. If a Church requires all who partake of the Lord’s Supper to receive the elements upon their knees, should any man conscientiously believe that this posture implies the worship of the consecrated bread, he cannot join in the service; or if a Church is so unfaithful as to admit to its fellowship those whom the law of Christ requires should be excluded, other Churches are not bound to receive them into fellowship. These and similar limitations do not invalidate the principle. It remains the plain duty of all Christian Churches to recognize each other as Churches, and hold intercourse one with another as such. And it is also their duty too make nothing essential, either to the existence of the Church or to Church fellowship, which the word of God does not declare to be essential.