N00395:98
Work upon the ark. Meditations upon the ark as a type of the church
Work upon the ark. Meditations upon the ark as a type of the church; delivered in a sermon at Boston, and now dedicated unto the service of all, but especially of those whose concerns lye in ships. / By Cotton Mather. ; [Four lines of quotations]
Boston: printed by Samuel Green, 1689
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
APPLICATION.
I pray, Why then do so many of you Stand without, and stay away, from the Ark of the Lord Jesus? It was a smart Expostulation of the Apostle, in 1 Cor. 11.22▪ Despise ye the Church of God? O 'tis a fearful Impiety to despise a place in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ; and yet this is to be charged upon multitudes of you, that every month turn your Backs upon the Table of the Lord. Ye Inconsiderate people! Will you make your Minister complain to the God of Heaven of you? O Lord I mourn. But shall I indeed go and say before the Great God, Lord, I have ⟨p. 34⟩spent some Hundreds of Sermons, to bespeak the Hearts of these people for thee; and yet they have never so Repented of sin, they have never so Believed on Christ, they have never so Covenanted with thy self, as that they dare come unto thy Table in the full communion of any Church of thine. Alas, what a complaint were this? But I beseech you to give no occasion for it.
Consider 1. If you are not continually Preparing for, and perpetually Desiring o• a Room in the Ark of the Lord Jesus, there is no likelihood of Everlasting Salvation for you. Many a good man is afraid o• coming into Church-communion; but the man who sincerely and earnestly takes pains to get himself ready for it, it may be hoped will soon overcome those Fears. If you can go on contentedly, without any comfortable and well-grounded persuasions of your Interest in the Favour of God; if you can go on quietly, leaving the matters between God and your own Souls at peradventures, I am to tell you, That you are yet in the gall of Bitterness, and in the Bond of iniquity. Have you entered into Covenant with God, or no? If you have done it secretly, then you may come and do it openly, If you have not, then your Salvation lies at