N00426:69
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.
as for them who made no proof of a True Repentance, 'tis recorded in Luc 7 30. They were not baptized of him. What shall I say more? Baptism is to be accompanied with The Answer of a good Conscience to all the proposals of the Gospel; 'tis to be accompanied with a Renunciation of The World, the Flesh and the Devil; 'tis to be accompanied with an Hearty Listing our selves under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ▪ Now, there is no less than a Saving Faith implied in such things as these. Wherefore I close this Argument, with the words of the Renowned Gilespy, I believe no Conscientious Minister, would adventure to baptize one, that has manifest signs of Unregeneration; and how shall we bring such an One then to the Table of the Lord? I do, in imitation of my Father before me, account this passage, A passage deserving to be written in Letters of Gold.
as for them who made no proof of a True Repentance, 'tis recorded in Luc 7 30. They were not baptized of him. What shall I say more? Baptism is to be accompany'd with The Answer of a good Conscience to all the proposals of the Gospel; 'tis to be accompany'd with a Renunciation of The World, the Flesh and the Devil; 'tis to be accompanied with an Hearty Listing our selves under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ▪ Now, there is no less than a Saving Faith imply'd in such things as these. Wherefore I close this Argument, with the words of the Renowned Gilespy, I believe no Conscientious Minister, would adventure to baptize one, that has manifest signs of Unregeneration; and how shall we bring such an One then to the Table of the Lord? I do, in imitation of my Father before me, account this passage, A passage deserving to be written in Letters of Gold.
Secondly, That Qualification without which ⟨p. 34⟩a man may not be taken into Church Fellowship, is doubtless to be demanded of them that would approach unto the Supper of the Lord. For, without, a Regular standing in a Visible Church, the Holy Table ought to be Inaccessible; and it is blindness, to imagine, That the Lord has prepared this blessed Banquet, for any but those that come into His Holy Mountain. It has indeed been disputed, Whether All Church-Members may presently be admitted unto the Lords Table. We all of us do stigmatize it as a gross Error, in those degenerate Christians, the Abissines, the Arminians, the Maronites, and some others, To distribute the Eucharist unto children. And the purest Churches of the Lord Jesus, have generally not been so large, or so soon in the Administration of the Lords Supper, as of Baptism. One has been given as Milk, when the other, like Strong Meat has been withheld; and the Ancients usually Detained the baptized, a while before they were Confirmed. But no man of sense ever imagined any other than that Only Church-Members might be admitted hereunto. Now a man may not be taken into Church-Fellowship without a probable and credible Profession of a Saving Faith o settle this point; I will not urge the Notion of some, that when our Lord washed the feet of his Disciples, adding, I have given