N01479:14
A monitor for communicants. An essay to excite and assist religious approaches to the…
A monitor for communicants. An essay to excite and assist religious approaches to the table of the Lord. : Offered by an assembly of the New-English pastors, unto their own flocks, and unto all the churches in these American colonies: with a solemn testimony to that cause of God, and religion in them.
Boston: printed by T. Fleet for Samuel Gerrish, 1715
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
Sirs, The Ambassadors of Peace have cause, for Weeping bitterly over you. What? Have we been Labouring so many years, to bring our People Home unto their only Saviour; & have all our pains been so ineffectual, ⟨p. 8⟩that not Half of our People have to this day come to those Dispositions of Piety, upon which they may venture to the Table of the Lord? Surely, We have Laboured in Vain, and Spent our Strength almost for Nought and in Vain; Or else we should see more of our People, with the Dispositions of a Regenerate Mind, accompanying of us, at the Holy Table!
Sirs, The Embassadors of Peace have cause, for Weeping bitterly over you. What? Have we been Labouring so many years, to bring our People Home unto their only Saviour; & have all our pains been so ineffectual, ⟨p. 8⟩that not Half of our People have to this day come to those Dispositions of Piety, upon which they may venture to the Table of the Lord? Surely, We have Laboured in Vain, and Spent our Strength almost for Nought and in Vain; Or else we should see more of our People, with the Dispositions of a Regenerate Mind, accompanying of us, at the Holy Table!
If this Consideration will make little Impression upon you, Oh! Look up to your only Saviour, and hear His Heartbreaking Expostulations. What? Have my People so little Regard unto the Remembrance of their Dying Saviour? Did I, when I was going to lay down My Life, on their behalf, ask them to keep Alive the Memory of what I have done for them, in a Sacramental Commemoration of it; and will they Forget My Last Will and Testament? Do I give them a Precious Opportunity of Communion with Me, wherein One Hour is better than a thousand elsewhere; and are they so entangled in the Lusts of this World, that they ⟨p. 9⟩will not make Ready, to meet me, where I would Commune with them? Oh! Consider of it.