God, and the grace of Christ, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.m Q. 20. Is not the Lord's supper a converting ordinance, which therefore should be used by the unbelievers, or ungodly? A. Many things may accidentally, by God's grace, convert a man, which are not to be chosen and used to that end. Plagues, sickness, death approaching, may convert men; falling into a heinous sin hath affrighted some to leave their sin. But these are not means to be chosen for such ends, and the fear and care of preparing for a sacrament hath converted some, when it was not the receiving that did it. It is so evident as not to need long proof that God never appointed the Lord's supper to be chosen and used by infidels, or impenitent, ungodly persons, as a means to convert them. 1. Because it is presupposed that they be baptised who communicate and I have proved that baptism to the adult presupposed the profession of faith and repentance, and that it delivereth pardon and title to salvation. : 2. Because faith, and repentance, and covenant-consent renewed, are also to be professed by all before they communicate. 3. Because it was ever an ordinance proper to the church, which consisteth of professors of faith and holiness. 4. And the communicants are said to be one bread and one body, and to eat Christ's flesh, and drink his blood, and Christ to dwell in them by faith, and to have eternal life hereby. And as for them that say it is not saving faith, but some commoner, preparatory sort, which is necessarily to be professed in baptism and the Lord's supper, I have at large confuted them in a treatise of Right to Sacraments, and the reasons before and now named confute it. I add, that their opinion is destructive to true christian love; for by them no one should be taken for a child of God, and in a state of salvation, for being baptised, and communicants, and so not loved as such. And how poor a charity is it to love all visible church members, but as the children of the devil must be loved! Q. 21. Must we love all as true Christians who are baptised, and communicate, and profess Christianity? A. Yes, with these three exceptions; 1. That it is not as a certain truth, that we must judge them as sincere, but as probable. 2. That there be divers degrees of probability as there be of profession. Some, we are almost sure, are sincere; and some we have more fear than hope of: and we must measure m 1 Cor. xi. 20, 30, 31. our love and trust accordingly. 3. If men by word or life apostatise, or plainly contradict and destroy their profession of Christianity, thereby they nullify our obligation to take them for Christians: but till men render their profession incredible by contrary profession or practice, we are, by the rules of christian and human charity, to take all professed, baptised, communicating Christians to be sincere, but only in various degrees of probability." Q. 22. How must the Lord's supper be improved after the receiving? A. By a serious remembering with joy and thankfulness, how great mercies we have received of God; and, with cheerful obedience, what a covenant we have made, and what duty we have most solemnly promised; and in how near a relation and bond we are tied to the whole church of Christ, and to all our fellow Christians: and frequently to plead these great receivings and great obligations, to quicken our faith, and hope, and joy, and to overcome all temptations to the world and flesh, to unbelief, disobedience, and despair. Q. 23. Some say that no man should be kept from the sacrament, or excommunicated, because it is the food of their souls, &c. A. 1. If none be kept from baptism, heathens and infidels, and professed deriders of Christianity might be baptised to make a mock of baptism. We must make men Christ's disciples before we baptise them. (Matt. xxviii. 19.) And then baptism would be no baptism, nor the ministry no ministry, the specifying end and use being changed. 2. Then the church would be no church, but lie common with the world. 3. And then Christ would be no King, and Head, and Husband of his church, that is, no Christ.P 4. If all may not be baptised, all may not communicate: for baptism entereth them into a state of communion, else the unbaptised, and all infidels, might communicate. 5. Some baptised persons turn atheists, sadducees, or infidels, after; and these are worse than common infidels that never were baptised. The church is no church if it be common to these. 6. Soine that continue a nominal Christianity, openly hate and persecute the practice of it, and live in common adul " Acts xi. 26; ii. 38, 41, 42, 44—46, and iv. 32, 34; Mark xvi. 16; 1 Cor. x. 16, 17, and xii. 8, 11, 13; 2 Cor. xi. 2; Gal. iii. 28; Eph. iv. 3, 5; John iv. 1, and xiii. 35; Rom. vi. 3,5; Matt. x. 42; Luke xiv. 26, 33. • 1 Cor. xii. 16, 20—22. » Matt. xxviii. 19; Mark xvi. 16; 1 Cor. xi. 27-30; Eph. i. 22, 23. tery, perjury, murder; and the church is holy, and a peculiar people, a holy nation, a royal priesthood: 9 and repentance and obedience are necessary to the church as well as faith. If, therefore, these notorious, flagitious, impenitent persons, must be members in communion with the church, it will be a swine sty, and not a church; a shame to Christ, and not an honour. If his church be like the rest of the world, Christ will not be honoured as the Saviour of it, nor the Spirit as its Sanctifier. It is the unity of the spirit that all Christians must keep in the bond of peace. But these have none of his Spirit, and therefore are none of Christ's. The sacraments are symbols of the church as differenced from the world; and Christ will have them be a visibly distinct society. 7. Communicants come to receive the greatest gift in the world, pardon, justification, adoption, right to heaven. The gospel giveth these to none but penitent believers. To say that Christ giveth them to flagitious, impenitent rebels, whose lives say, "We will not have him reign over us," is to make a new gospel, contrary to Christ's gospel, which Paul curseth, were it done by an angel. (Gal. i. 7, 8.) They are not yet capable of these precious gifts. 8. The objectors take no notice of 1 Cor. v. 2; 2 Thess. iii.; Rom. xvi. 16, 17; Tit. iii. 10; Rev. ii. and iii.; where the churches are reproved for suffering defilers; nor Heb. xiii. 7, 17, 24; Luke xii. 42, 43; 1 Thess. v. 12, 13, which describe the office of church guides; nor 1 Tim. iii. and iv., &c., where the governing of the church, and avoiding communion of the impenitent, are described. 9. In a word, Christ's office, works, and law, the nature of the church and sacrament, the office of the ministry, the frequent precepts of the apostles, and the constant practice of the church in its greatest purity, down from the apostles' days, do all speak so plainly for keeping and casting out infidels and impenitent, wicked men, and for keeping the church as a society of visible saints, separated from the world, that I can take him for no better than a swine or an infidel, who would have the church keys cast away, and the church turned common to swine and infidels. Q. 24. But it will make ministers lords and tyrants to have such power? A. 1. Somebody must be trusted with the power, if the work must be done. The church must be differenced from the world. 9 Tit. ii, 14; 1 Pet. ii. 9. Eph. iv. 3, 16; Rom. viii. 9. Therefore some must try and judge who are fit to be baptised, and to have its communion; and who are fitter than those whom Christ, by office, hath thereto appointed, Would you have magistrates, or the people, do it? Then they must be prepared for it by long study and skill, and wholly attend it, for it will take up all their time.s Q. 25. Must ministers examine people before they communi cate? A. They must catechise and examine the adult before they baptise them, and, consequently, those who were baptised in infancy, before they number them with adult communicants; or else atheists and infidels will make up much of the church, who will come in for worldly interest. This examination should go before confirmation, or the public owning of their baptism; but there is no necessity of any more examination before every sacrament, except in case of scandal, or when persons need and crave such help. Q. 26. Who be they that must be excommunicated, or refused? A. Those who are proved to be impenitent in gross, scandalous sins, after sufficient admonition and patience. And to reject such, is so far from tyranny, that it is necessary church justice, without which a pastor is but a slave, or executioner of the sinful will of others; like a tutor, philosopher, or schoolmaster, who is not the master of his own school, but must leave it common to all that will come in, though they scorn him, and refuse his conduct. But no man must play the pastor over other men's flocks, nor take the guidance of a greater flock that he can know and manage, much less be the only keybearer over many score or hundred churches; and, least of all, take upon him to govern and judge of kings and kingdoms, and all the world, as the Roman deceiving tyrant doth. CHAP. XLVII. Of Preparation for Death and Judgment. Q. 1. How must we prepare for a safe and comfortable death? A. I have said so much of this in my family book, that to 1 Cor. iv. 1, 2; Matt. xxiv. 45, 46, 47; 1 Thess. v. 12. avoid repetition I must refer you thither, only in brief: 1. Preparation for death is the whole work of life, for which many hundred years are not too long, if God should so long spare and try us. And all that I have hitherto said to you, for faith, love, and obedience, upon the Creed, Lord's prayer, and commandments, is to teach you how to prepare for death. And though sound conversion at last may tend to pardon and salvation, to them that have lived a careless, wicked life, yet the best, the surest, the wisest preparation, is that which is made. by the whole course of a holy, obedient, heavenly life.t Q. 2. What life is it that is the best preparation? A. I. When we have so well considered of the certain vanity of this world, and all its pleasures, and of the truth of God's promises of the heavenly glory, as that by faith we have there placed our chiefest hopes, and there expect our chief felicity, and make it our chief business in this world to seek it, preferring no worldly thing before it, but resolved, for the hopes of it to forsake them all when God requireth it: this is the first part of our preparation for death." II. When we believe that this mercy is given by Christ, the Mediator between God and man, and trust in his merits and intercession with the Father, and take him for our teacher also, and our ruler, resolving to obey his word and Spirit. This is the second part of our preparation for death.* III. When the Holy Spirit hath shed abroad God's love upon our hearts, and turned their nature into a habit of love to God and holiness, and given us a victory over that love of the world, and fleshly prosperity, and pleasure, which ruleth in the hearts of carnal men, though yet our love show itself but in such mortification, and endeavour, and grief for what we want, we are prepared for a safe death." But if the foretastes of heavenly glory, and sense of the love of God, do make our thoughts of heaven sweeter to us than our thoughts of our earthly, hopes, and cause us, out of love to God and our glorified Redeemer and his church, and out of love to a life of perfect knowledge, love, and joy, to long to depart and be with Christ, then we are prepared not only for a safe but a joyful death." Phil. ii. 12; Heb. v. 9, and xii. 28; Tit. ii. 11, 12; Luke xix. 9, and xiv. 26, 33; Rom. x. 10, 11; 2 Pet. iii. 11, 12; Pet. i. 9. " Matt. vi. 33. * 2 Cor. iv. 16, 18; John iii. 16. y 2 Cor. v. 17; Heb. xii. 14; Rom. viii. 9, 13. * 2 Cor. v. 1, 3, 8; Phil. i. 21, 23. |