hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled And now when thou hast exercised thy self in these acts and the time of the holy Communion approacheth Then 6 Imploy thy time in awakening and affectionate thoughts of Christ thy Lord. Consider the greatness of his Condescension the kindness of his Vndertaking the boliness of his Life the purity of his Doctrine the heaviness of his Sufferings the power of his Resurrection and the glory of his Ascension Turn thy thoughts earnestly and often upon these and such instances of the History of the holy Jesus and by them dispose thy self to a befitting remembrance of him at his Table And Lastly Gather up all thy thoughts and resolutions together viz. thy apprehensions of the vileness of sin of the Grace of the Covevenant and the merits of thy Lord Thy purposes of leaving every evil way and of renewing thy baptismal Vows and say to thy self Now is the time come that I must use these thoughts and resolves that I may obtain pardon and strength victory over sin and assurance of happiness My Lord invites me to the great representation of the evil of sin in his own sufferings to see his Body wounded and his Soul made an Offering for Sin in the Type of Bread broken and Wine poured out To remember his Conquest over Sin by Death and a glorious Resurrection To see the Covenant of Grace and pardon sealed He invites me to these Priviledges and call upon me to bind my self stronger in this holy Covenant and thereby to make my self the subject of those blessings it assures and conveys I say imploy thy Soul in such thoughts and bring them with thee to the Lords Table spread them before him there in humble Confessions Supplications and Acknowledgments and thou mayst then expect to receive the benefit thou art seeking after These are Preparations for a bare Penitent that hath yet made but little progress in subduing of his Sins And though the highest degrees of all these are not absolutely necessary to the coming of such to the Lords Table yet the more they have been exercised in them so much the better it is by so much they re more prepared and so much more they may expect of the benefits But if your minds that have not been used to spiritual things will not fix long on such thoughts and meditations Ingage them as far as you can proceed in the Method prescribed with that diligence and care that becomes one that is serious And then though your preparations be imperfect now they may be more compleat against another season If thou art sensible they have been so defective maintain and keep up that sense and resolve upon it to indeavor to fit thy self better for another Sacrament by renewing the same method which will be easier for thee in the progress than it was in the beginning As for the other sort viz. II. Those that have advanced in the conquest of their sins They are to act over all the former particulars that I have advised to the bare Penitents For being yet sinners and imperfect they have need to use that Method And there are these few other Directions to be briefly added that do further concern them 1 Call your selves to a particular account concerning your sins examining what vices you are most addicted to and what are the sins of your tempers or of your Profession and Calling when you have found those exercise particular acts of Repentance upon them and renew your resolutions against them Consider that allowance of them is inconsistent with sincerity and a state of true regeneration That 't is necessary you should oppose and subdue them and that the holy Sacrament is to be used as a means for that blessed end 2 Examine what ground you have got upon your sins since the last Sacrament whether you are now more tender and fearful of offending God than you were before whether your inclination to any evil be more weakened and mortified If so take encouragement hence to go on with more Christian vigor and resolution If not humble your selves for your unfruitfulness and indeavor to dispose your souls to make a better use of the next opportunity 3 Inquire into the state of your souls as to your Graces what Graces are wanting and what are weak which are growing and which at a stand and when you have found the condition of your souls as to these then exercise your meditations upon those particulars in the Life Doctrine and Precepts of your Lord whom you are to remember at his Table that may be proper for your case Apply your thoughts and cares and resolutions that way Design and resolve to attend the holy Sacrament for the supply of those wants and to endeavor to use it so that the needed graces may be obtain'd and the weak ones may be strengthened that those that are at a stay may be put into motion forwards and those that are growing may be further improved If you thus provide and imploy your selves in the method before remembred you will then be meet partakers of the holy Mysteries and may assure your selves of the blessings and advantages which they convey THis Subject would have required larger discourse but my present business was principally with the careless and negligent to whose condition I have mostly applied my self For the others that are solicitous for their souls and desirous to be further informed about this great and important affair of Preparation I shall advise them to get and carefully to read and digest two excellent Books of the Sacrament The former called Mensa Mystica or a Discourse concerning the Sacrament of the Lords Supper by Dr. Simon Patrick and the latter named the Christian Sacrifice containing most excellent Meditations and Prayers both before and after the Sacrament In the first design of this little Discourse I intended to have added some things of that sort for your use But while I was thinking of it my Pious Learned and Excellent Friend the Author sent me one of those his last Books the Devotion and Piety of which is extraordinary and there is nothing that I know fitter to prepare your affections and to excite them to the noblest height of desire and love than those heavenly Meditations And you cannot use more proper judicious or affectionate Prayers than those he hath annext So that I was exceeding glad when I saw this useful much needed Work so incomparably well done that there was no occasion of my doing any more in it than earnestly to recommend that book to your perusal And I intreat you to get it into your Houses and from time to time to indeavor to warm your souls by it when you are preparing for the Sacrament and by it to fix you in your resolutions of living according to your ingagements there when you have attended on that blessed Ordinance And now my Friends I leave you to the blessing of God and the consideration of what I have said Whatever judgment may be made of it I have this testimony that I meant it sincerely And I shall never cease to pray that both you and I may sincerely practice according to it Your Faithful Monitor and Servant J. 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Lord and a Seal of the Covenant that God hath made with us in him Two things then it is principally designed for 1 To Remember us of our Lord and Saviour and 2 to be a Seal of the Covenant of Grace of each briefly 1 'T is for a Remembrance not only of his Person or only of his Sufferings or any other particular part of his Ministry But we are by it required thankfully and affectionately to call to mind All that he hath done and all that he hath suffer'd His Life Doctrine and Laws His Passion Resurrection and Ascension His Victory over Sin Death and Hell and the gracious Covenant that God hath made with us through him These are all included in his Body and Bloud as I intimated before of which the Holy Sacrament is a Sign and Memorial And the remembrance of these which we are call'd to by the Divine Institution is not only some slight and passing thoughts but a solemn and most serious fixing of them upon our minds in order to the inflaming our affections with love and our wills with resolution that we may live answerably to that excellent Religion of the Holy Jesus which we profess 2 'T is the Seal of a Covenant The new Testament in my bloud The Covenant is That God will give pardon of Sin and eternal Life upon the conditions of Faith and Repentance This He seals to us in the Sacrament and assures us that he for his part will make good his Promises and we on ours seal that we will endeavour to perform the conditions So that the Lords Supper is a Sacrament by which we confirm those ingagements we are entred into at Baptism Then our Sureties undertook for us that we should be faithful in the Convenant and in this holy Ordinance we take all those obligations upon our selves and in our own persons promise to act according to them This plainly and in short is the nature and design of the Holy Sacrament concerning which there are some other expressions in Scripture which I shall consider briefly in order to the further explication of the sacred Mystery The chief are these 'T is called 1 The Cup of blessing 1 Cor. 10. 16. 2 The communion of the Body and Bloud of Christ 1 Cor. 10. 16 and in the duty t is said 3 That we shew the Lords Death 1 Cor. 11. 26. 1 The Cup of Blessing viz. of Praise and Thanksgiving Our Saviour Matth. 26 gave thanks when he took the Cup. The Jews used to conclude their paschal Supper with a Cup of Wine at which time they sung an Hymn and therefore call'd it the cup of praising and blessing And the Heathens also after their feasts had their cups of Praise to their Gods which some take to be the Cup of Divils mention'd by the Apostle I Coa 10. 21. So that by this we are taught to remember our Lord at his Table with praise and grateful acknowledgements And therefore the Ancients from hence call'd the Lords Supper the Holy Eucharist namely a Feast of Thanksgiving and the Solemnity was always attended with an hymn of Praise 2 Communion or Communication of the body and bloud of Christ viz. The Sacrament is a sacred Rite in which God communicates and imparts to all worthy Receivers the Benefits of Christs Incarnation and Sufferings He doth then ratifie confirm and solemnly exhibit them to those that duly attend upon that Divine appointment 3 As often as ye eat ye do shew the Lords death viz. 1 Declare unto men with joy and glorying that we believe he dyed for such purposes and that he hath procured inestimable benefits for us by his Death That therefore we will adhere and stick unto him and that neither death nor life shall seperate us from the love of God in Christ Iesus our Lord. And 2 Imports our shewing and declaring this also unto God and pleading it with him for his pardon and his grace for the sake of that meritorious Passion which we set forth and commemorate These passages fall under the Account I have before given of the Ordinance and shew how we are to Remember our Lord in it and what we may expect in so doing Thus briefly of the Nature and design of the Sacrament I might have run the matter into a large Discourse but I resolve all convenient brevity In what I have said you will find all things that are necessary and essential to the Ordinance For the niceties and disputes that are about it you need not trouble your selves with them But so much of it as I have represented I mean in the substance of the particulars 't is fit you should know And therefore I intreat you especially those of the more ordinary understandings to return back and fix your thoughts a while upon those periods and read them over and again till you have a clear and distinct apprehension of the Subject they explain I know the thoughts of most are very confused and much in the dark about it and while they are so they cannot demean themselves as they ought in the performance of the Duty nor receive those benefits that otherwise they might from it I beseech you therefore not to content your selves with a single and running reading Many Divine Truths will not enter into our minds at first sight or if they do they are gone as soon as they are received Though they are never so plainly exprest yet they many times seem dark till we look again Or though they strike our minds fully yet they pass out of Memory except we reflect and think them over I hope therefore you will do your selves this right And I thus urge you to consideration of my accounts not as if I fancied I had made any discoveries in them which were not made before No These are known things among the Intelligent sort of Christians But I do it because I speak to the meaner and less improved understandings And perhaps from the Representation of the affair which I have given the others also may receive the advantage of a clearer order and method to their thoughts and be deliver'd from many unnecessary and uncertain notions that they have imagined to be of great consequence to be believed and known when either they are not true or not considerable CHAP. III. I Come now to the main thing I design viz. II To urge this great duty which I have thus explain'd and to do what I can to persuade you to the conscientious practice of it Now there are two things that commonly oblige men to action namely Considerations of Duty and of Interest And there are both here in the highest degree to ingage us I shall discourse of each 1 We have the Motive and Reason of Duty and Duty in such circumstances as have the greatest obligation in them A Lord who hath all right to our obedience both by nature and by dear purchase hath commanded us to do this And A Saviour who hath rescued
enmities and embrace our enemies and shed abroad our kindness upon all about us yea and extend it to all the world in prayers and good wishes And now This Spirit of Charity is a most divine temper and a great happiness 'T is a sweet serene and pleasant thing a reward to it self if there were no other Whereas envy and malice and all the degrees of them are an hell and torment to the Soul they are great sins and their own punishment And a right use of the holy Sacrament will abate and remove these and therein also administer blessed and unspeakable advantages to us 4 Our Hopes are nobly advanced and strengthened by this Ordinance When the good man considers the Iustice and Holiness of God and the perfection of his Law and then takes a view of his own sinfulness and innumerable imperfections His Spirits fail and his hope is giving up the Ghost he sinks into trouble and almost into the regions of despair Now all the relief that a man can have in such a state is to be drawn from Gods Covenant to pardon sin and to accept of faith and repentance instead of perfection This is the Tenour of the Gospel and the foundation of our hopes and this Covenant is sealed and assured to us at the Sacrament so that thence the fainting Soul may derive life and quickning And when the drooping Christian comes from seeing God putting his Seal to his pardon and to the promises made him of eternal Life His hopes recover and his spirits return unto him His Soul leaps for joy and all his powers are full of content and pleasure And over and above this God is pleased at such times especially to vouchsafe more abundant manifestations of himself to the Soul sealing his love upon it and giving it so much assurance as may deliver it from its unreasonable doubts and suspicions and make it in part partaker of our Masters joy But this will be a particular by it self Therefore 5 The holy Sacrament is an excellent means to heighten a Christians Ioy and Comfort For there we are in a special exercise of our Graces and by them are prepared for Divine peace and pleasure That peace of God which passeth all understanding Phil. 4. 7. and this is something more than that content that naturally ariseth upon and results from the Actions of holiness and vertue and is superadded by the nearer applications of the Spirit of God to the Soul This pleasure and satisfaction God is always willing to bestow upon us but we by our sins indispose our selves for it and it is not to be given but to prepared Souls And now according to the greater or less degrees of our preparations and exercise of our graces we shall have more or less of this spiritual joy and satisfaction in our Communions But besides the joy which is special and extraordinary The Ordinance in its own nature tends to delight and pleasure We had raised storms and tempests by our sins and provoked him whom we can neither resist nor avoid His Countenance was full of dread and terrours and Death and Hell stood ready for the command to seize upon us And must it not needs fill those with joy and transport that were just now in this dreadful state when they shall see the Heavens cleared and the storms gone to behold smiles and love in the face of the offended Majesty to be assured that he is reconciled and his Arms are open to receive us That Hell and Death are destroyed and Life and Happiness procured for us All these are set before us in the holy Sacrament and did we use it as we ought our souls would be transported with joy and we should have a delightfull foretaste of the happiness and triumphs of the Blessed and all our Lives would be Anthems of Praise and acclamation to the adorable Author and procurer of our Blessings And this 6 Is another happy advantage we derive or may do from the holy Sacrament viz. That it heightens and spirits our Gratitude and Praises Praise and acknowledgement of Divine favours are all the return we can make for them and we are to offer up these Sacrifices for our selves and all the other creatures But the commonness of our mercies takes away the sense of them and we pass them over with slight and customary acknowledgements This ordinarily is our course and 't is a very disingenuous and ungrateful carriage to the bountiful Author of our beings and blessings But now at the Holy Sacrament Divine favours are particularly and solemnly represented our remembrance awakened and our affections excited and the devout Soul pours it self forth into holy Eucharist and thanksgiving The heart is full and the mouth flows All the powers rejoyce and rejoycing breaks forth into Songs of Praise And so begin that blessed imployment which shall be the work and happiness of Heaven Thus we shall receive increase to our Graces and our Comforts from the frequent and due use of the Holy Sacrament and all other spiritual advantages are containd under these And as by these particulars we may incourage our selves to our duty so in them likewise we may see how we are to demean our selves in the discharge of it what acts we are to exercise and by what considerations we may stir up our graces inflame our affections and strengthen our resolutions And now the Benefits that I have represented to incourage and invite you to the holy Sacrament do not only concern the thorough and grown Christian but even all that own the profession of Christs Religion and have not renounc'd their baptismal ingagements by leudness and impiety For such have some degrees of Faith Love Repentance and other vertues But the unhappiness is that these in the most are very low imperfect and in a degree that will not secure their condition These graces must be advanced to nobler measures and to such degrees as may prevail over the contrary habits and dispositions Till the matter comes to this we are under the Law and a spirit of bondage in a condition of impotency and weakness and not arrived to the glorious Liberty and Power of the Sons of God This all that profess the Christian Faith and Hopes ought to aim at and indeavour after and the Sacrament is the most proper and likely means for the advancing of our imperfect Graces to that noble height So that all professing Christians are concerned in the duty and capable of the benefits And to all those that have such thoughts and such desires the Considerations I have presented will be of moment But for the rest that are careless and unconcerned dead to such spiritual Motives and stupidly careless of the duty and the priviledges that attend it They are not Christians but do as much as in them lies to renounce their Religion and to put themselves into the condition of Heathens and professed Infidels This is that I come next to discourse After all my perswasions and most