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
earnest endeavours I have too much cause to think that some among you neglect the holy Ordinance not for any reason that they have or can as much as pretend but from meer brutish stupidity and unconcernment They care not for these things The motives of Religion and another world can do nothing with them such considerations are not felt but past over their Souls without making any impressions on them And now as for such I come to shew That they disclaim Christ and his Religion and are by no means to be reckoned into the number of Christians This I prove by the following particulars First They renounce a main Article of the Creed viz. The Communion of Saints their Communion with 1 Christ and their Communion with 2 one another 1 Christ invites us to his Table and prepares a spirituall entertainment for us and in that there is a solemn and special intercourse between him and his Church which on our part consists in the exercise of our Graces and on his in the benefits and blessings he bestows He invites us to come and to meet him there to injoy spiritual correspondence and communion with him And now wilfully to refuse the invitation is to signifie our contempt of the holy Jesus and so declare that we care not for any nearness of correspondence with him And such neglectors in effect say that they love the converse and communion of their vain and vitious company That they can spend their time pleasantly in their conversation upon an Ale bench or place of idleness or debauches But for Christ Iesus they like not his company and care not for any intimacy of acquaintance with him This is the direct language of such practices and neglects and what kind of Christians are such as these 2 They renounce the Communion of Saints one among another The holy Sacrament is the Feast of Charity and Christian Love and there our affections are united to God and to our brethren There we profess to be of one Body one Society and to be all members one of another So that those who neglect and refuse this holy Symbol of Love break off from the Society of Christians and declare they will have nothing to do with them as far as they are concerned in that name and relation That they will not be of the flock and number that Christ calls his but would rather have their lot with the world and herd of mankind who are strangers to the Covenant of Promise without hope and without God in the world Eph. 2. 12. That they value not their priviledges nor care for their hopes This is the meaning of their neglect and such Christians are the wilful refusers 2 They renounce their Baptism This is the Sacrament of entrance into Christianity and here ingagements are laid upon us without our knowledge or consent At the Sacrament of the Lords Supper we solemnly engage and take those obligations upon our selves If we refuse to do this we withdraw our consent from what was done in our stead we make our Baptisme void and put our selves into the state of Infidels and Heathens The Indians were by the Spaniards driven to Baptism in droves like Cattel to the water without knowing what it meant or what they did in it were these Christians by virtue of such a Baptism Especially is there any reason to think those of them such who as soon as they were free made open declarations against it And are those among us Christians who were signed with that Religion when they could not help it and profess against it by their actions and neglects as soon as they are in capacity to do it who disown it when they are solemnly called to put their seal and to declare their allowance and approbation Their sureties ingaged for them that they should believe the Christian Faith keep God's Commandments and renounce the World the Flesh and the Devil But say these by their practise what had they to do to undertake such things for us we will stand to no such ingagements we are call'd on to make this good our selves in person at the other Sacrament or by our neglects to declare it void but we will not tie our selves or own any such ingagements on us we will leave our selves at large to believe what we please and to practise what we phancy and to gratifie and worship as long as we think fit the World the Devil and the Flesh our friends and dearest correspondents All this likewise is plainly signified in the neglect of the holy Sacrament and therefore certainly such are no better Christians than the wild men of America which will further appear if we consider 3. That by it they deny the very profession of Christ Iesus They will not as much as claim nor pretend to him in any solemn significant way To say that we are Christians and now and then to hear a Sermon these are not profession enough They are but cold declarations of our opinion no good significations of our Faith The right profession of Christianity is made by our presenting our selves at the Lords Table and owning our Faith there that is a solemn and publique confession and acknowledgement To hear Sermons is too often but curiosity or custom to say we are of the Christian Religion is but a declaring in what way we have been brought up and meer education-Faith is but a faint unsignifying thing It is but opinion and a low degree of assent 'T is true a man may be a Formalist and an Hypocrite when he comes to the Lords Table as well as in other lower significations of his Religion But however he makes a profession and that which is proper and solemn whereas the wilfully negligent refuse to make any due confession of Christ and his Religion They openly deny him before men and such he will deny before his Father which is in heaven Mat. 10. 33. To withdraw from the profession of Christianity in times of difficulty and persecution is a great sin but 't is such a one as admits of some extenuation from the frailty of humane nature and the temptations of fear and self love But to deny the profession of Christ in times of Liberty and incouragement this is an affront to the Holy Iesus for which there is no shadow of excuse and must arise from contempt and a confest neglect of him Such persons publish to the world that they own nothing of Religion but count it a disparagement to be thought any way concern'd for it And so are by no means to be accounted Christians Further 4. Their refusal and neglect is a quitting and renouncing the whole Covenant that God hath made with sinners in his Son The Covenant on Gods part offers Grace and Glory and on ours it binds to Faith and sincere obedience We are called to the Sacrament to see God confirming what he hath promised and assuring us to make good what concerns him On the otherside we are to present
our selves there to profess our readiness and resolution to perform our part to keep the terms to which we are ingaged and upon which we expect the promised blessings Now if we wilfully refuse this Confirmation we withdraw our selves from the Covenant and declare that Grace and Glory are things that we neither care for nor expect and that we will not tie our selves to any faith or homage but would be as free as we can to follow the Devil and our Lusts and so are far off from being Christians CHAP. IV. I Have thus briefly shewn you what is signified and implyed in the neglect of the Holy Sacrament Many of you that are guilty of this sin would I supposed be loath openly and in words to renounce Christ and his Religion and yet while you continue in this obstinate dangerous neglect you do it as fully as if your tongues declared against that name and profession And I think when any such as these turn Papists Turks or Iews they do but change to some shew of Religion from none at all So that it is no real disparagement or loss to our Church when those Infidels declare in words what before they sufficiently signified by their practice They go out from us because they were never of us 1 Iohn 2. 19. They do not change their Religion for they had never any before which they might exchange This Sirs in serious truth is the condition of those that wilfully refuse and neglect the Duty of Holy Communion And me thinks it should make such tremble to consider that they live in a profest and impudent contempt of God You pity Heathens and ignorant Americans but there is work enough for your pity at home and their condition certainly is not worse than the condition of those careless negligent sinners among our selves Yea the Apostle tells us That 't is better never to have known the way of truth than after we have known it to turn away from the Holy Commandment 2 Pet. 2. 21. and our Saviour saith It shall be more tolerable for the dark Tyre and Sidon at judgment than for the inlightned Capernaum and Bethsaida Matt. 11. 22. We think their condition dreadful that say there is no God and no doubt it is so And certainly their state is not less deplorable That acknowledge there is a God but defie him and carry the matter so as if in good earnest there were no such being To live at large without the ferious profession of some Religion is brutish and unnatural And those Savages that do so deserve not to continue in the societies of men but are fitter to range among the wild beasts of the woods And such are those among us that never make any solemn profession of any Religion by any act of their own They have no Religion but that of their Climate which they neither understand nor mind they are Christians by the Christianity of others viz. the general profession of their Country or they are none at all and if they live and die in this condition wild men and Cannibals will at the last be in a better state than they And now Sirs Reason for this carelesness and dangerous neglect I am sure you have none Nor do the sort I am now dealing with pretend Scruples of Conscience But yet some Excuses there are which you know are but vain that you use upon occasion to take off the edge of reproof and to seem to justifie your selves by them in the sight of men Thus they that were invited to the Supper in the Parable Like 14. 18. made excuses One had bought ground and he must see it a second had bought Oxen and he must try them and a third had married a Wife and could not come None of these pretences had any good reason in them they were some thing to say and had a little colour but they were not the causes of their not coming to the Supper No the true ground was their contempt of the Master and his Invitation and therefore Matt. 22. 3. 't is said They would not come Their excuses were looked on as flat denyals and the reason is given after It was not their Ground nor their Oxen nor their Marriage but their disesteem of the Lord and his Feast They made light of it v. 5. But though these excuses were not good yet they had something specious in them 'T was business and considerable occasions that were alledg'd and such affairs they really had for 't is said in St. Matthew that they went their way one to his Farm and another to his Merchandise so that there was something true in their pleas though the main thing for which they were brought was false But now if they had sent word that the Lord's house was so far off that they were not able to go to it though really it were within some few furlongs of their remotest dwellings and not further than the Markets which they constantly frequented There had been more folly in this excuse If they had said that there was not room for them all in the Lord's House when they knew that it was never full on such occasions and that a great part of those that were invited would not come so that they were sure to find too many empty places the excuse would have been interpreted as a mockery and a scoff at the invitation If they had told the Messengers that they would not come except they had each of them a Chair and Cushion provided for him and might sit in state and ease at the Entertainment this had been greater arrogance than appears in those Refusers If they had sent the Lord word that they would not feast with him at such or such of his Houses that were appointed and were most convenient for their reception but they would have it here or there at home and next door in places much less fit This would have been a very humersome and very rude answer to the Invitation If further they had said that the Feast began too soon and that they could not rise so early though the Sun was up many hours before and they were abroad every day earlier about their other business This also had been an affront to the Master and a contempt to his kindness But if these surly unworthy people should have been humour'd in all particulars and things should have been so managed as to have avoided all these pretences And yet if after such condescention they should have refused they had confuted themselves and given the lye to their excuses But if notwithstanding all this they should have cried out that they were perishing for want of bread and clamour'd and complain'd heavily that provision was not made for them what could have been said to such an impudent brazen'd sort of Hypocrites Sirs there are some among you that understand what I mean I speak not thus out of ill will to upbraid any of you but I ought to mind you and to endeavour to convince
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