N00426:243
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.
You must pass on to Examine your selves, thus much further;
Are the Fundamental Articles of the Christian Religion duly Apprehended and Entertained with me?
Are the Fundamental Articles of the Christian Religion duely Apprehended and Entertained with me?
An Ignorance of some Extra-fundamentals, may be in some persons Tolerable, because Invincible. And a Diversity of Opinion thereabout, is no just Bar to Communion, where the person supposed to Err may yet be supposed to have the Spirit and Image of Christ Jesus in him; an Exclusion from Communion upon this account, is usually the effect of that uncharitable and pharisaical Pride, which has a thousand times already set the Cornfield of our Lord on fire. But as to things that concern the Foundation, we are to know, That the Soul without knowledge is not Good. If we are not only Erroneous but Heretical, the Flocks of the Lord Jesus are to drive us from them with such a zeal as the Apostle John used unto Cerix••us, or such as was used unto […] by that Smyrnian Angel, Polycarp. If we […] the Leprosy in our Heads, we may not come into […] Camp of the Lord Jesus. Briefly, Being well fixed and settled, in a persuasion, That the Scriptures are the inspired and unerring Word of God, containing all that we are to Think▪ or Do, in order to our Happiness.
An Ignorance of some Extra-fundamentals, may be in some persons Tolerable, because Invincible. And a Diversity of Opinion thereabout, is no just Bar to Communion, where the person supposed to Err may yet be supposed to have the Spirit and Image of Christ Jesus in him; an Exclusion from Communion upon this account, is usually the effect of that uncharitable and pharisaical Pride, which has a thousand times already set the Cornfield of our Lord on fire. But as to things that concern the Foundation, we are to know, That the Soul without knowledge is not Good. If we are not only Erreneous but Heretical, the Flocks of the Lord Jesus are to drive us from them with such a zeal as the Apostle John used unto Cerixus, or such as was used unto by that Smyrnian Angel, Polycarp. If we the Leprosy in our Heads, we may not come into Camp of the Lord Jesus. Briefly, Being well fixed and settled, in a perswasion, That the Scriptures are the inspired and unerring Word of God, containing all that we are to Think or Do, in order to our Happiness.