N00426:35
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
Invitations to the SUPPER of the LORD, With a DISCOURSE on the Natu… › Proposition 1
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.
But if it be now Enquired, For what Cause only Bread and Wine […] by our Lord Jesus pitched upon.
But if it be now Enquired, For what Cause only Bread and Wine 〈…〉 by our Lord Jesus pitched upon.
The Answer is ready,
Even so, O our Saviour, because it pleases thee! Indeed some think that our Lord pitched upon the old Rites of the old Jews, and ordained them for a New, and a Lasting, and a Gospel Improvement with us; and that he put a new Superscription upon a •old Metal in it. For, they say, in the […], the Master of the Feast distributed unleavened Bread unto them that were present, and then concluded with a cup of Wine, which was called, a cup of Blessing, ⟨p. 16⟩among them. And it is also true, That our Lord Jesus had been Celebrating the Passover when he first Instituted this holy Sacrament; the Passover, I say, and a very Notable Passover it was. I don't Remember a Distinct Account in the Scriptures of more than seven Passovers that were kept, and at the seventh (which is a perfect and sacred Number) behold the true Paschal Lamb Himself is present appointing another Sacrament. But (tho' I deny not this, yet) it is easy to go too far towards the Rash and False Assertion of those, whose Talmudic Learning has thought it self not enough acknowledged, unless we affirm, That the pattern for the Rules and Rites of Gospel Churches, were taken from the Synagogues of the Jews. An Assertion, as untrue, as, That Moses took most of his Laws from the Egyptians. •ut it is incident unto Learned Men that have been at vast pains in the finding & fining of one useful Notion to think it not useful enough unless almost all the Affairs of the Scriptures receive some Elucidations from it; as besides the Scholars of the Talmud, some that have waded into the Zabian Rites, and others that have studied the concerns of the Gnostics have given us an Example. As for the practices in the Synagogues of the Jews, we have no Record of theirs concerning them, but what is at least two hundred and fifty years younger and later