N00426:182
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.
Conclusion. I.
An Assurance of a Good State in the sight of God, is a thing Attainable, Profitable Necessary. We may arrive to an Infallible certainty of it, That we are the Children of God▪ and come to no less Confidently than Comfortably challenge the Benefits of that Relation. If an Assurance of a good State could not be attained in this Life, why are we bidden in 2 Pet. 1 10. To make our Calling and Election sure. It intends not an Objective Assurance; for all true Believers are most surely Called and most surely Elected, in respect of the Thing it self; but it must me in, a Subjective Assurance; q d. Labour to become in respect of your own Apprehension and your own Satisfaction Assured of it, That you belong to God. The precept for this thing, intimates its being Practicable Yea, we find many of the Saints Triumphing gloriously in the Assurance which they have had of their own ••••city. Thus Job could say, I know ⟨p. 88⟩that my Redeemer lives: Thus David could say, The Lord will Redeem my soul, from the power of the Grave; For He will Receive me! Thus could Paul say, I live by the Faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for ME! Doubtless these Holy men have their Successors in the World. It is the office of the Spirit, as a witness, to confirm the Souls of Believers, in a Triumphant persuasion of their good State before the Lord, see Rom. 8. 18. And such are the Impressions of that Eternal Spirit upon the Souls of many persons every day; and this not only in a way of Renovation, but in a way of Consolation too; that they can cheerfully say, as in Can.2 16 my Beloved is mine, and I am His! Tis upon the Supposition of This, That the Saints of God are called upon to Rejoice Always, and Always give thanks; to style God, Their Father; and to long for the second coming of Christ. There were too much of Irony in these Commands if Assurance were not Attainable.