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
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
Sorrow for Sin 2. Confession of its and 3. Aversation from it For the First 1. The evil of Sin is never so well discerned as in its effects It is sweet in the mouth but bitter in the belly And there is no greater evidence of its vileness and malignity then that we have in the sufferings of our Lord which are set before us in the Holy Sacrament And certainly sin must needs be an accursed thing saith the considering Communicant That the blessed Jesus must thus be made a Curse for it That is doubtless a mighty evil that cannot be expiated but by the bloud of God And Sin without question hath unspeakable malignity in it since it laid such a load of wrath upon the shoulders of Omnipotence as made him complain and sweat and groan and die The good man hath never such a sence of the evil of sin as when he is awakened by the signs and images of Christs Sufferings and when he sees it writ in Characters of Bloud Besides the baseness and ingratitude of Sin is made evident in all the representations of the Divine Love which we have at the Lords Table We see there that it is an abuse of the greatest and most tender Goodness and there is nothing that more affects ingenuous Souls than the sence of such unworthiness and this will beget the liveliest and most kindly sorrow They shall look on me whom they have pierced and they shall mourn Zech. 12. 10. The tenderest grief ariseth from the apprehension of abused Goodness And the more ingenuous Spirits are sooner brought to be troubled for their sins by a sence of Mercy than of Terrors Now there is nothing that gives a truer or greater representation of Divine Grace and Kindness than the Holy Sacrament and therefore this is a very effectual means to beget and increase a penitential sence and sorrow for sin And upon this 2 Follows Confession which is one expression of these The apprehension of an Angry Majesty drives a sinner to desperation and prevents his Confession When the Lord ask'd the man in the Gospel with some severity How camest thou hither not having a wedding garment he was speechless Terrors beget stupifying fear which stops the mouth and damns up all the passages to and from the soul whereas the discoveries of goodness and mercy open the heart and melt the seal upon the lips They invite Supplications and beget Confessions and therefore the Sacrament which is a memorial of the greatest sweetest and freest mercy tends in the nature of it to the producing humble confessions and acknowledgements and it doth it likewise 3 As to the Aversation of Repentance by the same way The top and perfection of Repentance is to turn from our evil wayes God invites his People to this by the Argument that is most powerfully press'd upon us in the Sacrament namely That of his pardoning mercy and kindness Return thou backsliding Israel and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you Ier. 3. 12. His readiness to pardon is the great motive to return and the Sacrament is the Seal of the Covenant of Pardon Despair of Mercy keeps men on in a sinful course Thou sayest there is no hope say they in the Prophet Ierem. 2. 25. They thought their case desperate and it follows I have loved strangers and after them will I go The Devils persist irreclaimably in their hatred of God and Goodness because the unalterable Sentence is past upon them And if men come once to quit their hopes of Happiness they will also in a short time quit the thoughts of God and Virtue and give themselves up to the swinge of their Appetites and Inclinations Whereas on the other side Hope is the great Encouragement and Spring of Endeavour and where this is enlivened by a full and quick sence of pardoning Goodness that Soul will feel a mighty Motive to reform and turn from sin Now the Sacrament is the Seal of that Covenant which assures us of Grace and pardon and the firmest ground of our best hopes and most glorious expectations Thus the Grace of Repentance receives increase in all its exercises from this Divine Institution and so doth 3 That other most excellent Grace Love both as it relates 1. to God and 2. to our Neighbour 1 In the Holy Sacrament the Mysteries of Divine Love are unfolded in all their circumstances of wonder There we see pardoning redeeming bleeding dying Love Love suffering for all our sakes and Love procuring all things for our interests Love descending to the Grave and Hell and Love triumphing over both Love leading Captivity captive and obtaining gifts for men Light Life and a glorious Immortality Such Love and Love beyond what we can say and beyond what we can think is represented at the Holy Sacrament and this must needs fire every soul that is not as cold as the earth and as dead as the Grave Love begets Love and one flame kindles another And if we think of this Love and consider it as we ought when we come to the entertainment of Love this would excite our affections and turn our Souls into holy flames and so our dead Powers will live and our dull sleepy affections will awake into new spirit and vigour We shall live by Love and act by Love till we are received into the nearest embraces of Love and swallowed up in that immense ocean of Love Now Love is the best and most pleasing of all our passions and Love to God is the best and most pleasant of all Loves A Love free from those tortures and disquiets that shame and those griefs that are produced by absence and uncertainties loss and guilt when this passion is placed upon other objects This Love is the Fountain of Delight and the spring of Action that sweetents our troubles and stirs up our endeavours that makes duty agreeable and difficulties easie that is a present Heaven and the foretast of a greater This also 2 Tends to the encreasing our Love one to another It is a Feast of Love to our Fathers House and our Lords Table The Guests are Brethren and professing Children of Love Here are all the engagements to love set before us The Love of our Lord and his express Commandment job 13. 34. The Relations we stand in to God and to one another We cannot well choose but pity our Brothers Infirmities and pardon each others faults when we see how much God hath pityed our miseries and how graciously he hath pardoned our offences Our animosities will be abated and our thoughts of malice and revenge will die Our Indifferences will be kindness and our kindness Love when we consider the inexpressible Love of our common Lord and the blessed effects of that Love Reconciliation made Happiness procur'd and Sin and Death and Hell conquer'd A sence of these will swallow up all our little picques and displeasures and so fill us with the thoughts of Gratitude and Love That we shall forget our