N00426:131
A companion for communicants. Discourses upon the nature, the design, and the subject of…
A companion for communicants. Discourses upon the nature, the design, and the subject of the Lords Supper; with devout methods of preparing for, and approaching to that blessed ordinance. / By Cotton Mather, Pastor of a church at Boston. ; [Seven lines from Augustine]
Boston: printed by Samuel Green for Benjamin Harris, 1690
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.
Consider, secondly.
It is a very Great Calamity to which you Expose your selves. It is Injurious both to your Inward and your Outward man: you are enormous Transgressors against the second Commandment in a special and peculiar manner; now those the blessed God calls, The •aters of him; and he says, I will Visit their Iniquities.
Hence, I do not at all admire it, That this Omission often lays a thousand Thorns in the Deathbeds of them that have had this blame lying upon them. How often have I heard these Lamentations proceeding from those that have been passing into another World! Their Lamentations have had the Groans of a Deadly wended man setting an Accent on them; and they have sighed, Oh That I had joined my self to some Church of the Lord Jesus before I came to this! Oh that I had been a more frequent and serious Guest, at the Table of the Lord! If God will now spare me, that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more, the first thing I do shall be to Reform this Omission! It must needs wound the Soul of a sensible man, to think, what wrongs he has done himself by his, Not coming to the Table of the Lord.
Hence, I do not at all admire it, That this Omission often layes a thousand Thorns in the Deathbeds of them that have had this blame lying upon them. How often have I heard these Lamentations proceeding from those that have been passing into another World! Their Lamentations have had the Groans of a Deadly wended man setting an Accent on them; and they have sigh'd, Oh That I had joind my self to some Church of the Lord Jesus before I came to this! Oh that I had been a more frequent and serious Guest, at the Table of the Lord! If God will now spare me, that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more, the first thing I do shall be to Reform this Omission! It must needs wound the Soul of a sensible man, to think, what wrongs he has done himself by his, Not coming to the Table of the Lord.