A treatise concerning the Lords Supper

Quest. 1. Have I a principle of spiritual life, or am I yet dead in Trespasses and Sins? O• my Soul! the work thou art intending at a Sacrament, it is lively work; and if thou art dead thou canst not do it: thou art to go feed upon the bread of life, and if thou art dead, thou canst not do it. Thou art to feast no• only with, but upon the Lord? But if thou art dead, thou canst not do it. I find it recorded in Numb. 19.10, 11. If any man was defiled by reason of a dead body, he was not to eat the Lords Passover till the second month. How much more unfit am I to eat the Lords Supper, if yet my heart be dead, not only dull, but dead; there is no converse between the living and the dead; dead men do not converse with living men; and a dead heart altogether void of spiritual life, cannot converse with a living God.

In order therefore to the discovering of thy spiritual life, I will propound these following Enquiries, to which give in thy answer seriously, as in the fear of God; and solemnly, as in the presence of that God that doth search thy heart, and know thy state, and let thy Conscience make reply as thou wouldest do if thou wast now to dye.

First, Hast thou ever had any spiritual sense of things good and evil? Didst thou ever see the excellency and the beauty of Christ, and the vileness and deformity of sin? Is Christ most lovely, and sin most loathsome in thine eyes? Didst thou ever taste such sweetness that there is in Christ, in a Promise, or in communion with God, that it makes thee choose Christ, embrace a Promise, prefer Communion with God above all things in this World? or didst thou ever taste such bitterness in sin, that makes thee loath it, and unfeignedly willing to leave & to forsake it? once thou hadst no relish in spiritual things, but hast thou now? time was when thou didst taste sweetness in thy sin, when thou didst delight therein: but is it as bitter to thee now, as then it was pleasant and delightful? Thou hast had an ear to hearken to the Temptations of the Devil, the Flatteries of the World, to Sinners icing thee to Sin, to the corruptions of thine own heart, calling thee to yield to all these: but thou hadst not an ear to listen to the motions of the Spirit of God, nor to the voice of the Ministers of God, nor to the voice of the