N00426:164
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.
TIS a Passage Registered and Recorded in some Ancient Histories, that the Priest going to Sacrifice, would ask Who is here? and that Answer was usually given to him, [Greek or Hebrew], There are none but good men amongst us. We are now drawing near to a Sacred and a Solemn ⟨p. 82⟩Ordinance, wherein the Lord Jesus will take a special Observation of them that are admitted thereunto; unless it may truly be said of us, They are good men, we can expect nothing but our own confusion in the Displeasure of Him That will not be mocked.
TIS a Passage Registred and Recorded in some Ancient Histories, that the Priest going to Sacrifice, would ask Who is here? and that Answer was usually given to him, 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, There are none but good men amongst us. We are now drawing near to a Sacred and a Solemn ⟨p. 82⟩Ordinance, wherein the Lord Jesus will take a special Observation of them that are admitted thereunto; unless it may truly be said of us, They are good men, we can expect nothing but our own confusion in the Displeasure of Him That will not be mocked.
The Error which the Corinthians fell into, and the Counsel which was thereupon given to these Corinthians, may be made profitable to our selves, in assisting those Preparations which our Lord requires us to approach unto Him with. Tis an Afflicting Sight which our Context here gives unto us, of the foul Blots and Blurs which were quickly made in a famous Church, that had newly come out of the Apostles hands, An Epistle of Christ, fairly Written, and this not with Ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God. An Epistle was though needful to mend the Abuses which their flourishing Church was fallen into; and particularly, the Profanations of the Lords Supper which a Jewish Party in that Communion ha• precipitated the whole Society into. Where fore we have here a Correction of those Prof nations, by a Reduction of that blessed Ordinance to the Original Institution of it as it was made by our Lord Jesus Christ; and a mo Wholesome Advice about a Worthy Receiving an Partaking is added hereupon.