power of every wicked person to hinder the good man from the Sacrament when he pleased On such an occasion I say we may be innocently angry and not only pity the injurious man which many times is but a proud though more plausible word to disguise anger by And the man that is but thus justly pleased with an offender against God and himself is not indisposed for the Sacrament thereby If this be your case at any time you ought not to permit the injury of another to do you so much more as to keep you from your attendance on Christ at his Feast of Love But 2 If upon examination you have found that your anger and displeasure was unjust then the sin and the wrong was on your part and you ought to repent of it and resolve against it as a preparation for the holy Sacrament And if you do so the Sacrament will be a proper means to your end There you will find considerations and helps for the cooling of the heats of your passion and for the allaying the boylings of your rage and animosity I say if you are convinced in your conscience that your wratb is undeserved you ought to repent and if you do so you ought to use the Holy Sacrament for the confirmation of your repentance So that the scruple of not being in charity cannot justly keep any from the Sacrament but those that know they hate their brother without a cause and are resolv'd to persist in that hatred such as will not be reconciled to one that hath done them wrong though he repents and endeavours reparation And such in effect renounce Christ and declare that they expect no benefit from his merit or mediation for the obtaining pardon for themselves If this be your condition you may well be afraid to come to the Holy Sacrament and you may as well tremble to pray Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass againstr us For this is directly praying against your selves I hope it is not thus with any of you that make this exception But your neighbour you think is an evil man hath done you injury and not askt your pardon or sought your amends you are therefore displeased with him and feel much anger in your mind against him but yet are very ready to forgive him upon his acknowledgements and desire of forgiveness If it be after this manner with you you ought not to abstain from the Sacrament for this reason but rather to address your selves to it to provide and pray that your just anger may not grow into malice and rage that you may not be provoked to repay your enemy one injury for another but that by the due use of those holy mysteries you may be more inclined to forgiveness when he shall be fit for it This I think is sufficient for that doubt II Some plead I have so much business faln upon me that I have not time to prepare my self and therefore I cannot come In Answer to this I shall say something that concerns 1 Business and something 2 that concerns Preparation 1 As to Business Doth your Business afford you time to eat and drink and sleep and none to fit your souls for spiritual entertainments and converse with God 2 Have you any greater have you any better business than to prepare your selves to remember the Love of your dear Lord to meet with him to renew your Covenant with God and to receive pledges of his pardon and his love Do you not reckon that this is business and the most important and necessary business and shall the greater matters give place to the less 3 Is not much of the business that hinders needless have you not voluntarily involv'd your self in more affairs than it was necessary you should or than your state or station in the world requir'd might not some of it have been put off to some other time or might not the time that you spend in impertinencies be imployed in some of that business Ask your Consciences these questions and know that what ever business you take upon you more than is consistent with your duty to God and to your souls that business is your sin But if your business were not voluntary but thrown on you by Providence the doing such necessary business is Gods work and while you do it in his fear and with an eye to his glory you are doing somewhat that is a preparation for the Holy Sacrament or at least that which doth not by any means indispose you for it And hence I pass to the Answers that concern II. Preparation As to this take these two things 1 There are Preparations required to Prayer and Hearing as well as to the Sacrament Meditation is the Preparation for Prayer and Prayer the Preparation for Hearing and I hope that notwithstanding your business you perform these duties If not you are to repent speedily of your neglect and to take the first opportunity of the Sacrament there to confess your sin to declare your repentance and resolutions of amendment to beg pardon for what you have omitted and grace to assist you in what you resolve But if you have perform'd those holy services then I say 2 That those performances joyned with faith and repentance are preparations for the Holy Communion For when we hear and when we pray we do the same thing that we do at the Sacrament though not with that solemnity we remember Christ when we hear and we do the same and renew our Covenant with God when we pray in which two I have told you the nature of the Ordinance consists so that these acts are dispositions and preparations for that which is the more solemn performance A good life in the discharge of our duties towards God and man is an habitual and constant preparation for the Sacrament and a true Christian is alwayes ready and prepared to remember Christ and to confirm the Covenant whereby he is a Christian. It is indeed very fit that we should take some time before we approach the Lords Table to call together into our thoughts the several great instances of the love of our dear Saviour which we are to remember there what particular sins we have to confess and to resolve and covenant against what graces we want and are more especially to implore These things we should do but they are not works that will require much labour or time if we have been constant in the other preparatory duties of Meditation Prayer and Hearing for they do habituate such thoughts and resolutions to the souls of good men But if thy case be such that thou hast been an evil man and negligent of all spiritual duty but art now sensible of thy sin and desirous to reform that sense and those desires of amendment if they are sincere and if thou understandest the nature of the Sacrament and Gods Covenant that is sealed by it are thy preparations The more time thou takest and the more
have communion with such Yea they are commanded to have no fellowship with them Ephes. 5. 11. and to come out from among them 2 Cor. 6. 17. For the answering this I propose these things to be considered 1 Hast thou taken the Method of our Saviour Matth. 18. 15. with the sinner from whose communion thou thinkest thou must withdraw Hast thou privately told him of his faults Hast thou admonisht him before witnesses Hast thou told the Church If so thou hast done and he persist still in his wickedness he will no doubt be legally excluded from Christian Communion and so the foundation of thy doubt will be taken off 2 How art thou sure when thou seest those thou callest wicked come to the Sacrament that they do not repent of their wickedness and come to the holy Ordinance to beg pardon for their sins and strength against them How dost thou know that they are not come to bind themselves by deep resolutions and sacred vows to a spiritual warfare and a new obedience Their coming makes profession of such designs and resolutions and how dost thou know that that profession is insincere Hast thou a way of prying into the heart But the man returns to his sins as soon as he hath done and hence thou wilt say thou knowest his hypocrisie This indeed were something if it could be certainly foreseen but how he will demean himself after the Sacrament thou canst not foretel This may have more effect upon him than former Sacraments have had This I say may be and charity thinketh no evil but believeth all things hopeth all things 1 Cor. 13. or if it now again prove otherwise it is no certain evidence that the man onely made pretence and shew he might then mean and design truly and well but temptations and his lusts were too strong for him and carried him away against all his endeavors and resolutions 3 Thou performest other sacred duties in which thou remembrest Christ and hast communion with God in the company of evil men Thou joynest in hearing and publick prayers with such and why mayst thou not be present at the Sacrament with them If it be pretended as a reason of difference That hearing the Word and Prayer are converting Ordinances but the Sacrament is not so I ask thee then whether thou meanest by converting a turning men from open Infidelity to the Profession of the Christian Faith and the owning of Christian Virtues or onely the turning those that profest this Faith and Religion before to the practise of them If thou intendest the former the Sacrament indeed is no converting Ordinance nor are the Word and Prayer ordinarily used for such purposes among us where the Gospel is already generally profest And thou dost not bear the company of the wicked of which we speak in the places of publick worship upon any such expectation But if by converting ordinance thou meanest as is most likely such a one as God useth as a means to cause men professing the name of Christ to depart from iniquity to turn from sin to holiness and from the power of Satan unto God I see no reason why any should think or say that the Sacrament is no converting Ordinance If it be not either 't is because the Sacrament is no proper means or because God will not concur by his Grace with it Neither of these can be said with any shew of reason Not the former for why should not the solemn remembrance of Christ and the consideration of what he hath done and suffered be a means for the killing of sin which he came to destroy and the promoting holiness which he lived and died to advance yea what can be supposed more likely and powerful for the promoting of that blessed purpose why should not the sign and seal of Gods gracious Covenant to give pardon and eternal Glory to all that forsake their sins and live an holy life be a fit instrument to provoke those that understand it to renounce their sins and to devote themselves unto holiness why should not that solemn sacred ingagement that all that know what they do lay on themselves at the Sacrament to endeavor to depart from every known evil and to practise every known duty be a means to oblige them to it Certainly there is nothing that in the nature of the thing seems to be a more likely instrument to convert men from a life of sin to a life of holiness than the sacred remembrance of our Lord at his Table So that if this Ordinance be not converting it must be because God will not concur by his grace in it But whoever saith that speaks what he cannot know and cannot prove he talks without book and against it and is so extravagant in his assertion that it would be folly to attempt the confuting of him This I have said on this occasion not to ingage in a Controversie but to clear a matter of Christian practice And the very root of this Objection lies in this conceit That the Sacrament is not a converting Ordinance For which there is nothing but Phancy and the bare sayings of some mistaken men But now if as I have proved The Sacrament may be and is an Instrument of Conversion Then why should any refrain because evil men are admitted to it 4 If wicked men come to the Sacrament that are not prepared for it their unpreparedness is their sin and they shall answer for it But we ought not therefore to neglect our duty because they have omitted theirs We may and we ought to advise and admonish them to prepare themselves for the Ordinance before they come to it If they will not follow our brotherly admonition we cannot help it we have done what we can to render them more worthy and their sin shall not be laid to our charge To prepare our selves for the holy Communion and to address our selves unto it is that which we are sure concerns us If we neglect 't is our sin and other mens sins will not excuse us Their sinning in one kind should be no reason why we should sin in another There is no reason that we should starve our selves because others take the bread that belongs not to them 5 If we are worthy Communicants and others receive unworthily They have no Communion with us nor we with them They onely eat bread and drink wine but we partake of the mystical body and bloud of our Lord. Our Communion is with the Father and with his Son Iesus Christ and with the Faithful worthy Receivers but the unworthy partake neither with us nor them If an Ape leap upon the Table and eat of the bread where Friends are met at an entertainment Is he therefore a Guest is he one of the Company If writings are to be mutually sealed there among the Friends and that Creature catcheth up the Seal and doth as the Covenanters do is he therefore a party He doth the same action but not with the same
prayers and thoughts thou imployest with other means to make the sense of sin deep and the desires of reformation intense and great the more thou art prepared and the better things are like to succeed with thee But if thy preparations are of a lower and more imperfect degree if of the true kind thou oughtest not therefore to abstain God will pardon thy infirmities and accept of thy sincerity and strengthen thee so that thou shalt be better prepared against another opportunity if thou art not wanting to thy self But as to this I may have occasion to speak more under the next Head to which I now come Viz. II To consider the Scruples of Conscience that keep some off wholly from publick Communions They are either of such as refrain because 1 they think themselves unworthy or 2 of those that do it because they think others unworthy or 3 of such as refuse on the opinion that the way of administration is unworthy Most of the considerable and usual doubts will fall under one or other of these I begin with those of the first sort 1 We would come to the Holy Communion but alas we are not worthy of so great an honour and priviledge and we are afraid to come because we hear that he that eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks his own damnation To this proposed thus in the general I answer 1 we are also unworthy of common mercies of meat and drink and raiment and of the more usual spiritual mercies that God should speak unto us or that we should be permitted to speak unto him shall we therefore starve our selves and go naked shall we therefore refuse to hear and pray In the Sacrament there is something of duty and something of priviledge when we are commanded to do a duty reasonable and just shall we refuse because we are unworthy when we are invited unto a benefit great and free and necessary shall we resist it because we are not worthy To do thus is to render our selves more undeserving When God offers favors we may and ought to accept though we are unworthy of them 2 All men are unworthy in the sense of the Law Every man in his best estate is altogether vanity Psalm 39. 5. We are all an unclean thing and our righteonsuess is as filthy rags Isa. 64. 6. The meaning is all men are sinners and their best services are imperfect and polluted There is none righteous no not one according to the strictness and severity of the Law which require unsinning obedience This unworthiness then is not a reason why thou shouldst refrain yea 3 If thou art sensible of this thine unworthiness and desirous to be made more worthy thou oughtest for that reason to come 'T is such that Christ invites Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest Matth. 11. 28. He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance Matth. 9. 13. Ho every man that thirsteth come Isa. 55. 1. The Spirit and the Bride say come and let him that is athirst come Rev. 22. 17. Sense of spiritual wants and desire of spiritual supplies is part of Gospel-worthiness and that which gives a right to the Sacrament Thy being an unworthy sinner is not a reason why thou shouldst refrain except thou art obstinately resolv'd to continue so The Beggar is never the more unworthy of an alms because he is in rags and great misery nor the sick man the more unworthy of the care and pains of a Physician because his disease is great and violent upon him If indeed the Beggar loves and chooseth want and scorns charity if the Patient hates and resists the Physician and his applications in such a case the one is unworthy of relief and the other of the means of health If this be thy case in spirituals thou art unworthy and till thou art of another temper I would not perswade thy coming But if on the other hand thou art sensible of thy sins and desirous of pardon and grace to reform thou hast the qualification that renders thee one that may and ought to come and thou art worthy as a Beggar is of an alms or the Sick of physick that is thou wantest it and Christ invites thee to come to receive supplies sutable to thy wants So that if it be thus with thee the sentence of the Apostle pronounced on him that eats and drinks unworthily will not concern thee But the doubter presseth the matter more particularly Knowledge Faith and Repentance are necessary to this worthiness But I have no knowledge I cannot believe I cannot repent and therefore am not worthy I shall speak to these distinctly and apart As to what concerns 1 Knowledge I propose these things 1 Perhaps thou art mistaken in the degrees of Knowledge that are necessary It is not necessary that thou shouldst have knowledge in deep and controversal points no nor yet in many doctrinal opinions about Religion that are less speculative and nice It is not necessary that thou shouldest be acquainted with the disputed matters about the Sacrament or be able to discourse largely upon the subject No Necessary knowledge is in few things and those practical If therefore thou art instructed in the main plain points of Christian Doctrine and in the great rules of Christian Life if thou understandest the Sacrament to be a Remembrance of Christ and a confirming our Covenant with God and knowest those easie things I have before set down about it There is no reason then why thou shouldst plead ignorance in barr to thy duty and priviledge But 2 If thou art really ignorant in those plain things thy ignorance is inexcusable 't is a great sin and an argument of prodigious carelesness and neglect For no one can want capacity to know things so easie and no one can want opportunity to know things so common and no one can plead excuse for not endeavoring to know things so necessary If this then be thy case repent of thy stupidity and carelesness that occasioned thy ignorance and apply thy self presently to thy spiritual Guide or some honest knowing Neighbor to instruct thee in those great and necessary matters Be afraid and ashamed to live a day longer in such dangerous darkness amidst so much clear light And till thou hast got out of this state of wilful blindness meddle not with holy mysteries But this I hope is the condition but of very few of you Those that make the objection are mostly such as do it upon the former mistake which I have endeavored to rectifie II Want of Faith is pleaded And to this scruple I say I Perhaps thou art out and hast been mis-taught in the Doctrine of Faith It may be thou takest Faith to be an assurance of salvation or supposest that it requires thy assent to many Principles and such as are unreasonable or doubtful or perhaps thy mind hath been confounded by phrases and various metaphorical and dark
Reverence And since the Fathers of the Church have commanded kneeling as the posture most expressive of our humility and reverence in receiving the pledges of divine Love I see no reason why any should boggle at it much less why they should refuse their Duty and their Priviledge abstain from their spiritual food and the solemn remembrance of their dear Lord rather than do a thing so innocent so decent and so reverend which the Authority of the Church requires from them He hath but little appetite to his meat that will not eat it except he may do it in such a fashion as is agreeable to his own humor I but the Objector doubts that there is real danger and something of Popery in the case the Papists use kneeling to signifie their adoration of the Host and the Scrupler fears there may be some such thing in our practise But this fear is very uncharitable and groundless since our Church doth so vehemently and constantly declare against the Transubstantiation of the Romanists and the adoration of any creature And since we are always told that kneeling is required for no other reason than to signifie our humility and reverence And though the Papists do express more by that posture yet since our Church declares that this is all she intends in reference to the consecrated Elements there is no ground why any should think more is meant by it Kneeling signifies reverence as well as worship and the declaration of the person himself is enough to shew which of them he intends But besides though the Papists adore the Bread as the real Body of Christ and therefore kneel before it yet that can be no reason why we should not in this remembrance of our Lord adore Him Himself They kneel to him as present corporally we worship him as virtually and spiritually present This I might urge further as a positive Argument for the posture of Kneeling over and above the use of it as an Answer to the Objection Thus all acknowledge That Christ is to be worship'd Receiving the Sacrament is the proper worship of Christ and kneeling is a proper signification of adoration It follows that on this account kneeling is sit and fittest to be used in the action of Communion But I shall pursue this matter no further what I have said may satisfie the modest and reasonable and people that are set and resolvâ—d in their opinions will not be satisfied with never so much more I should now draw to an end but I am loath to leave you without some particular Rules of Preparation These I shall lay down plainly and briefly in the ensuing periods CHAP. VI. THe Persons that are to come to the Sacrament may be distinguished into two sorts viz. Either such as do repent and are sorry for their Sins but have not yet in any good degree prevailed over them or Those other more improved and grown Christians who in considerable measure have mastered their Sins and are endowed with many habits of Holiness and Virtue The first sort are yet under the Law viz. a state of sense and conviction of Sin but have not attained to the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God or the state of power over them But the others have arrived to that power in competent measure so that sin doth not reign in their mortal bodies because they are not under the Law but under Grace For distinction sake I call the first sort Bare Penitents the second the Faithful Now the Preparations that concern these are different as their states are 1. For the bare Penitents and sorrowers for Sin I advise them to prepare by the Rules following 1 Endeavour to make your selves as sensible as you can of the evil of sin Consider it as enmity unto God and to your own happiness as the basest ingratitude and the greatest deformity as a thing to be hated for it self if there were no consideration had to its effects Look upon it as the destroyer of your present as well as future peace and felicity as the enslaver of your souls to the Devil and that which debaseth them to the likeness and condition of beasts Aggravate such considerations in your thoughts by all the circumstances that may render sin odious to you 2 Consider the gracious nature of the Covenant that God hath made with us in his Son That by that Covenant he hath assured all true Penitents of pardon of their Sins and strength against them So that be our Sins never so many or so hainous they will be forgiven if we repent and turn from them and be they never so strong and violent upon us they may be overcome if we accept and use the grace that the Covenant offers to us Represent these things duly and frequently to your thoughts and for the making the deeper impressions on them collect those places of Scripture that speak so fully of the Love and Mercies of God his readiness to pardon and desires of our happiness the frequent and free offers of his kindness His invitations to Sinners to come unto him and his often bewailings of their obstinacy and hardness in running from him Consider that he sent his Son into the World to seek and to save them that were lost to bring sinners to repentance to take away the sins of the World to deliver us from the wrath to come and that the World through him might be saved I say draw together such passages dwell upon them in thy Meditations till thou hast fill'd thy Soul with them And then thou wilt finde great incouragement to seek for pardon and wilt be supported against those faintings and despondencies that the meer sense of Sin without a Saviour might occasion in thy Soul 3 After this summon up all thy Resolutions against thy Sins Consider thy Baptismal ingagements how just and reasonable and necessary they were Resolve to confirm them by new Vows Content not thy self with some cold and indefinite intentions of leading a new Life some time or other but indeavor to settle in a firm unalterable purpose of fighting against Sin and living unto God Do all thou canst by Reason and Religion by the Considerations of Duty and of Interest to fix thy soul here And then 4 Be earnest with God in Prayer to give thee a fuller sight of Sin and clearer surer thoughts of pardoning Mercy To present thee with more arguments to heighten thy resolutions and to make thy soul more capable of being moved by them I say apply thy self unto God by Prayer publick private and secret prayer confessing thy own vileness acknowledging his Mercies and resolving new obedience And being thus prepared 5 Look on the holy Sacrament as thy great Duty and Remedy As that to which God calls thee and the state and necessities of thy soul call thee As that Ordinance in which thou art to seek and mayst expect pardon and strength resolution and peace Consider this and raise thine appetite and expectations for they that