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A39250
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The communicant's guide, shewing a safe and easie way to the Lord's table in compassion to the poorer and weaker sort of Christians / by Clem. Elis ...
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Ellis, Clement, 1630-1700.
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1685
(1685)
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Wing E554; ESTC R3546
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46,503
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143
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our Repentance be unfeigned and rest neither in confessing our Sins nor sorrowing for them nor begging Pardon nor in any thing else till it come up to a hatred of Sin and a full Resolution to forsake it When it is come to this we will be very angry at our own Folly that we have so long continued in it very thankful to God for any Chastisement thinking our selves mercifully dealt with whatever our Condition be so long as we are not in Hell use cheerfully all helps and means how hard or sharp soever to mortifie our Lusts thank any man that will reprove us and shew us our Faults watch diligently against all Temptations avoid carefully all occasions of Sin observe jealously our Thoughts Words and Actions pray devoutly for more Grace and Strength abridge our selves of many things lawful and punish our selves by crossing our own Wills not be ashamed to make publick satisfaction to the Church where it is required nor to open our Breasts freely to the Guide of our Souls for our own Satisfaction We will do any thing or suffer any thing to prevent sinning against God These helps to Self-examination might here have been omitted had I cause enough to believe that they for whose Ease and Benefit they are chiefly design'd had made as good use of my little Book called Christianity in short as I could wish they had made Those Summaries of Faith and Duty which there they have might have served them for this purpose And here I think fit to give my Readers notice that I suppose it would be very beneficial to their Souls once a Week or Fortnight or at least when they have examined themselves in order to this Sacrament with the greatest Seriousness and Devotion to use that form of Resigning themselves to God and renewing their Covenant with him which they have at the end of that small Book CHAP. VI. How to examine whether we be rightly disposed for the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper IF we be Christians we have a right to this Sacrament yet that we may profit the more by it we are more particularly to examine our selves both how we understand it and how suitable our Affections are unto it I. We are to try how we understand the Nature Ends and Benefits of this divine Ordinance To which end we are duely to consider the Institution of it as it is recorded in Scripture St. Matthew tells us that as they were eating Iesus took Bread and blessed it St. Luke saith he gave Thanks and brake it and gave it to the Disciples and said Take eat this is my Body St. Luke addeth Which is given for you this do in Remembrance of me and St. Paul saith which is broken for you c. And he took the Cup and gave Thanks and gave it to them saying Drink ye all of it for this is my Blood of the New Testament which is shed for many for the Remission of Sins St. Luke saith This Cup is the New Testament in my Blood which is shed for you And St. Paul saith This Cup is the New Testament in my Blood This do ye as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of me For as often as ye eat this Bread and drink this Cup ye do shew or shew ye the Lord's Death till he come By these Words of the Evangelists and St. Paul we may understand what the meaning and use of this Sacrament is 1. It is a holy Christian Feast not much unlike the Feast of the Passover among the Iews at which this was instituted by Christ. When they were in Bondage in Egypt God in order to their Deliverance destroyed all the first-born in Egypt commanding them to kill in each Family a Lamb and to strike the Blood thereof upon the Door-posts of their Houses and so to feast upon it promising that when he saw the Blood he would pass over their Houses and not destroy their first-born In thankful Remembrance whereof they yearly kept the like Feast called therefore the Lord 's Passover Thus by the Sin of Adam we being all brought into Bondage and Slavery under Satan it pleased God to destroy the Power of the Devil and deliver us by the Death of JESUS CHRIST the Lamb of God which taketh away the Sins of the World to redeem us by his precious Blood as of a Lamb without Blemish and without Spot so that Christ is our Passover sacrificed for us Therefore are we to keep the Feast eating our Passover the Body and Blood of Christ in a thankful Remembrance of this our Redemption and Deliverance by his once offering himself to God a Sacrifice for our Sins In like manner when according to the Law Men sacrificed Peace-offerings unto God they were allowed to feast before God on part of the same to signifie that God now admitted them to an intimate Communion and Friendship with himself feasting them at his own Table of that meat which by their Oblation was now in a special manner his So Christ whom all the Sacrifices of the Law did shadow forth and typifie being offered once for all a Sacrifice of Atonement for our Sins calleth us Christians to feast upon this Sacrifice though it was a Sin-offering and even upon the Blood of it as the Iews were not allowed to do in their Feasts in token of a more intimate Communion and Friendship with God through him who hath made our Peace This Sacrament then is a sacred Feast and that upon the sacrificed Body and Blood of Christ and as bodily we eat and drink the broken Bread and poured-out Wine the Symbols of his Body and Blood so spiritually we eat his crucified Body and drink his poured-out Blood 2. The great end of this Feast is to keep up in the Christian Church a fresh and joyful Remembrance of Iesus Christ and of all that he did and suffered in the Flesh for us This do saith he in remembrance of me It is his Pleasure that we more signally and solemnly commemorate thus the Sacrifice of his Death by a lively Representation of it at this Feast of Love and so shew his Death till he come 1. We shew it hereby to our own Hearts for the stirring them up to an holy rejoycing in Christ praising him believing in him loving him and obeying him and to bring them to true Repentance and a perfect hatred of Sin which crucified the Lord of Glory 2. We shew it to the World declaring to the Honour of our holy Iesus what great things he hath done for our Souls that we are not ashamed of a crucified Saviour that we glory before the World and rejoyce in him that he is the Food and Gladness of our Souls that we are resolved to be faithful unto him whilst we live and are ready to dye a bloody Death for him if he shall call us to it 3. We shew it unto God laying before him in our Prayers the Death of his only
THE Communicant's Guide SHEWING A Safe and Easie WAY TO THE Lord's Table In Compassion to The Poorer and Weaker Sort OF CHRISTIANS By CLEM. ELIS Rector of Kirkby in Nottinghamshire 1 Cor. 11. â—â— If we would Iudge our selves we should not be Iudged LONDON Printed for Iohn Baker at the Sign of the Three Pidgeons in St. Paul's Church-Yard M DC LXXXV TO THE Christian Readers More especially to those who belong unto my Charge for whose Help this Book is principally intended My Dear Friends I Hope none of you will think me so vain as to publish this Little Book for this Reason That I suppose there are not many better of the same Subject and for the same Use already abroad in the World I well know that there be very many and not a few of them so excellent that if you had them and knew how to use them this that I now present you with might well seem to be superfluous if not contemptible But I hope till you can be better provided it may be very useful to you at least in this that it may help to fit you for the using of those better and if this only be the use of it you ought not to despise it The true Reasons then why I thus tender you my Service are those which some of your selves have often prompted me with When you have been admonished to prepare your selves carefully for the worthy Receiving of this Holy Sacrament you have been ready to say That you wanted good helps and Books for that purpose and you continue ignorant for want of Instruction for though you hear Sermons and have been Catechized in publick and have been examined and instructed privately too by the Minister yet your Understandings being dull and your Memories weak you are not much better for all this because you want such Books to read as may help you more fully to understand your Duty This is a Pretence and no more than so in very many whose Love to Sin and Carelessness of their Souls and all their spiritual Concerns is indeed the real cause of their Ignorance and Unfitness for this and all other religious Duties To remove this Pretence and that you may not delude your selves to your utter undoing by thinking you have a sufficient Excuse for not doing so necessary a Duty when you have none is the cause of my presenting you with this help to the doing of it Some of you say That the most excellent of those Books already extant to this purpose are too dear and you are not able to buy them Herein some of you speak the Truth such I mean as have not wherewith to buy Bread for their Mouths or Cloaths for their Backs But the most of them who thus plead their Poverty say no more in effect but this That they think their Money better bestow'd in a Lace or Riband a Cup of Ale or a Game at Cards than on their Souls which were so dear to Christ that he paid his most precious Blood to redeem them Others say That those Books are too learned and hard for their Understanding and they should be no wiser for them if they had them And indeed there is too much Truth in this yet are there not wanting such as are so plain and easie that it can be nothing but your unacquaintedness with the very Princâ—ples of Religion that makes them seem hard If you were concern'd to understand any other Language than that of the Plow and Cart or thought it as needful to discourse sometimes of matters relating to God and your own Souls as to talk to your Horses and Oxen you might soon learn much Good from the Books you thus complain of Some of these Books you say are too long and tedious And it is true that some of them are longer than they should be for the use of the weaker sort of Christians But it is no wonder if every good Book seem too long to them who have no Delight in Goodness and to them that are weary of hearing a short Sermon of an Hour or it may be not so much A Book that will cost them some days to read it over understandingly must needs be very tedious indeed They that think all their time little enough to trade and drudge in for the World or their swinish Lusts cannot spare much of it for their Souls without grudging and wearisomness Now that you may not henceforward have any colour for such Pretences I here offer you one that is if I mistake not every way fitted to your Condition and Capacity for it is cheap and easie and short and yet I hope sufficient to teach and direct you in your Duty I herein endeavour to manifest my hearty Love and Care for your Souls and everlasting Welfare and if I had no other Reason for writing and publishing it but this only that I desire to shew my Readiness to serve you and to cast in my small Mite amongst those that offer more largely out of their Abundance towards the enriching of your Souls I may I hope be at least excusable But alas what better will you be for my Kindness if you will not make use of it This Book nay all the Books in the World will not make you Christians or worthy Communicants by lying by you or by a careless reading without understanding applying and practising no more than your Meat will nourish you without eating it Some few Years ago I gave you for the same Reasons which move me now to give you this a small Summary both of your Faith and Duty called Christianity in short which hath with very many found a welcome much above my Hope or Expectation the worst Entertainment it hath met with is from some of you for whose Benefit it was chiefly intended and who had it gratis The Reason why it hath been so coldly entertained at home whilst it was so welcome abroad I am apt to think is this That you know me better than Strangers do and seeing my Infirmities daily do more slightly regard my Endeavours than they who see them not But remember I pray you it is the Doctrine of your Blessed Saviour that in both that little Book and this I commend unto you and not my own Example Make but use of that as you ought and my Failings what hurt soever they do my self shall not hurt you One thing you are to be here minded of You read things of this nature so imperfectly and so heartlesly that little of what you read remains with you An obscene Ballad or idle tale-Tale-Book you can read with Delight and though imperfectly at first yet you read them so often till you grow too perfect in them to your own great Hurt Why take you not the like Pains in these Helps of Religion Because you take no Pleasure in Religion nor care much what becomes of God's Honour or the Salvation of your Souls This is too sad a Truth and you cannot deny it Your drowsie