and he found excellent conveniences in the entertainments of a hospitable good man, as if he had dwelt in Ahab's ivory house, and had had the riches of Solomon, and the meat of his household. THE PRAYER. O HOLY King of Sion, eternal Jesus, who, with great humility and infinite love, didst enter into the holy city, riding upon an ass, that thou mightest verify the predictions of the prophets, and give example of meekness, and of the gentle and paternal government which the eternal Father laid upon thy shoulders; be pleased, dearest Lord, to enter into my soul with triumph, trampling over all thine enemies and give me grace to entertain thee with joy and adoration, with abjection of my own desires, with lopping off all my superfluous branches of a temporal condition, and spending them in the offices of charity and religion, and divesting myself of all my desires, laying them at thy holy feet, that I may bear the yoke and burden of the Lord with alacrity, with love, and the wonders of a satisfied and triumphant spirit. Lord, enter in, and take possession; and thou, to whose honour the very stones would give testimony, make my stony heart an instrument of thy praises; let me strew thy way with flowers of virtue, and the holy rosary of Christian graces: and, by thy aid and example, let us also triumph over all our infirmities and hostilities, and then lay our victories at thy feet, and at last follow thee into thy heavenly Jerusalem with palms in our hands, and joy in our hearts, and eternal acclamations on our lips, rejoicing in thee, and singing Hallelujahs in a happy eternity to thee, O holy King of Sion, eternal Jesus. Amen. II. O BLESSED and dear Lord, who wert pleased to permit thyself to be sold to the assemblies of evil persons for a vile price by one of thy own servants, for whom thou hadst done so great favours, and hadst designed a crown and a throne to him, and he turned himself into a sooty coal, and entered into the portion of evil angels; teach us to value thee above all the joys of men, to prize thee at an estimate beyond all the wealth of nature, to buy wisdom, and not to sell it, to part with all, that we may enjoy thee and let no temptation abuse our understandings, no loss vex us into impatience, no frustration of hope fill us with indignation, no pressure of calamitous accidents make us angry at thee, the fountain of love and blessing, no covetousness transport us into the suburbs of hell, and the regions of sin; but make us to love thee as well as ever any creature loved thee, that we may never burn in any fires but of a holy love, nor sink in any inundation but what proceeds from penitential showers, and suffer no violence but of implacable desires to live with thee, and, when thou callest us, to suffer with thee, and for thee. III. LORD, let me never be betrayed by myself, or any violent accident and importunate temptation; let me never be sold for the vile price of temporal gain, or transient pleasure, or a pleasant dream; but, since thou hast bought me with a price, even then when thou wert sold thyself, let me never be separated from thy possession. I am thine, bought with a price; Lord, save me; and in the day when thou bindest up thy jewels, remember, Lord, that I cost thee as dear as any, and therefore cast me not into the portion of Judas; but let me walk, and dwell, and bathe in the field of thy blood, and pass from hence, pure and sanctified, into the society of the elect apostles, receiving my part with them, and my lot in the communications of thy inheritance, O gracious Lord and dearest Saviour, Jesus. Amen. ON THE PROPER MANNER OF RECEIVING THE HOLY SACRAMENT. ST PAUL hath given us instruction in this: "First, let a man examine himself, and so let him eat: for he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." That is, although, in the church of Corinth, by reason of the present schism, the public discipline of the church was neglected, and every man permitted to himself; yet, even then, no man was disobliged from his duty of private repentance, and holy preparations, to the perception of so great a mystery; that "the Lord's body" may be discerned from common nutriment. Now, nothing can so unhallow and desecrate the rite, as the remanent affection to a sin, or a crime unrepented of. And self-examination is prescribed, not for itself, but in order to abolition of sin and death: for itself is a relative term and an imperfect duty, whose very nature is in order to something beyond it. And this was, in the primitive church, understood in so much severity, that if a man had relapsed, after one public repentance, into a foul crime, he was never again re-admitted to the holy communion; and the fathers of the council of Iliberis call it a mocking and jesting at the communion of our Lord, to give it once again, after a repentance and a relapse, and a second or third postulation. And, indeed, we use to make a sport of the greatest instruments of religion, when we come to them after an habitual vice, whose face we have, it may be, wetted with a tear, and breathed upon it with a sigh, and abstained from the worst of crimes for two or three days, and come to the sacrament to be purged, and to take our rise by going a little back from our sin, that afterwards we may leap into it with more violence, and enter into its utmost angle: this is dishonouring the body of our Lord, and deceiving ourselves. Christ and Belial cannot cohabit; unless we have left all our sins, and have no fondness of affection towards them, unless we hate them, (which then we shall best know when we leave them, and with complacency entertain their contraries :) then Christ hath washed our feet, and then he invites us to his holy supper. Hands dipped in blood, or polluted with unlawful gains, or stained with the spots of flesh, are most unfit to handle the holy body of our Lord, and minister nourishment to the soul. Christ loves not to enter into the mouth full of cursings, oaths, blasphemies, revilings, or evil speakings; and a * 1 Cor. xi. 28, 29. heart full of vain and vicious thoughts, stinks like the lake of Sodom; he finds no rest there, and when he enters, he is vexed with the unclean conversation of the impure inhabitants, and flies from thence with the wings of a dove, that he may retire to purer and whiter habitations. St Justin Martyr, reckoning the predispositions required of every faithful soul for the entertainment of his Lord, says, that "it is not lawful for any to eat the eucharist, but to him that is washed in the laver of regeneration for the remission of sins, that believes Christ's doctrine to be true, and that lives according to the discipline of the holy Jesus. For this holy sacrament is a nourishment of spiritual life, and, therefore, cannot with effect be ministered to them who are in the state of spiritual death; it is giving a cordial to a dead man; and, although the outward rite be ministered, yet the grace of the sacrament is not communicated; and, therefore, it were well that they also abstained from the rite itself. For a fly can boast of as much privilege, as a wicked person can receive from this holy feast, and oftentimes pays his life for his access to forbidden delicacies, as certainly as they. : It is more generally thought by the doctors of the church, that our blessed Lord administered the sacrament to Judas, although he knew he sold him to the Jews. Some others deny it, and suppose Judas departed presently after the sop given him before he communicated. However it was, Christ, who was Lord of the sacraments, might dispense it as he pleased but we must minister and receive it according to the rules he hath since described: but it becomes a precedent to the church in all succeeding ages, although it might also have in it something extraordinary, and apter to the first institution; for, because the fact of Judas was secret, not yet made notorious, Christ chose rather to admit him into the rites of external communion than to separate him with an open shame, for a fault not yet made open. For our blessed Lord did not reveal the man and his crime, till the very time of ministration, if Judas did communicate. But if Judas did not communicate, and that our blessed Lord gave him the sop at the paschal supper, or at the interval between it and the institution of his own, it is certain that Judas went out as soon as he was discovered, and left this part of discipline upon record, That when a crime is made public and notorious, the governors of the church, according to their power, are to deny to give the blessed sacrament, till by repentance such persons be restored. In private sins, or sins not known by solemnities of law, or evidence of fact, good and bad are entertained in public communion ; and it is not to be accounted a crime in them that minister it, because they cannot avoid it, or have not competent authority to separate persons, whom the public act of the church hath not separated: but if once a public separation be made, or that the fact is notorious, and the sentence of law is in such cases already declared; they that come, and he that rejects them not, both pollute the blood of the everlasting covenant. And here it is applicable, what God spake by the prophet: "If thou wilt separate the precious thing from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth." * But this is wholly a matter of discipline, arbitrary, and in the power of the church; nothing in it of Divine commandment, but what belongs to the communicants themselves: for St Paul reproves them that receive disor *Jer. xv. 19. derly, but gives no orders to the Corinthian presbyters to reject any that present themselves. Neither did our blessed Lord leave any commandment concerning it, nor hath the holy Scripture given rules or measures concerning its actual reduction to practice; neither who are to be separated, nor for what offences, nor by what authority, nor who is to be the judge. And, indeed, it is a judgment that can only belong to God, who knows the secrets of hearts, the degrees of every sin, the beginnings and portions of repentance, the sincerity of purposes, by what thoughts and designs men begin to be accepted, who are hypocrites, and who are true men. But when many and common men come to judge, they are angry upon trifling mistakes and weak disputes; they call that sin that angers their party, or grieves their interest; they turn charity into pride, and admonition into tyranny; they set up a tribunal that themselves may sit higher, not that their brethren may walk more securely: and then concerning sins, in most cases, they are most incompetent judges; they do not know all their kinds; they miscall many; they are ignorant of the ingredient and constituent parts and circumstances; they themselves make false measures, and give out according to them, when they please; and when they list not, they can change the balance. When the matter is public, evident, and notorious, the man is to be admonished of his danger by the minister, but not, by him, to be forced from it: for the power of the minister of holy things is but the power of a preacher and a counsellor, of a physician and a guide; it hath in it no coercion or violence, but what is indulged to it by human laws, and by consent, which may vary as its principle. Add to this, that the grace of God can begin the work of repentance in an instant, and in what period or degree of repentance the holy communion is to be administered, no law of God declares; which, therefore, plainly allows it to every period, and leaves no difference, except where the discipline of the church, and the authority of the supreme power, doth intervene. For since we do not find in Scripture that the apostles did drive from the communion of holy things, even those whom they delivered over to Satan or other censures, we are left to consider that, in the nature of the thing, those who are in the state of weakness and infirmity, have more need of the solemn prayers of the church, and, therefore, by presenting themselves to the holy sacrament, approach towards that ministry, which is the most effectual cure; especially since the very presenting themselves is an act of religion, and, therefore, supposes an act of repentance and faith, and other little introductions to its fair reception; and if they may be prayed for, and prayed with, why they may not also be communicated with, which is the solemnity of the greatest prayer, is not yet clearly revealed. The surest way, most agreeable to the precedents of Scripture, and the analogy of the Gospel, is that, "by the word of their proper ministry," all sinners should be separate from the holy communion, that is threatened by the words of God with damnation and fearful temporal dangers, if themselves, knowing an unrepented sin, and a remanent affection to sin, to be within them, shall dare to profane that body and blood of our Lord by so impure an address. The evil is to themselves; and if the ministers declare this powerfully, they are acquitted. The duty of preparation, that I here discourse of, is such a preparation as is a disposition to life; it is not a matter of convenience or advantage to repent of our sins before the communion; but it is of absolute necessity, we perish if we neglect it; for we "eat damnation," and Satan enters into us, not Christ. And this preparation is not the act of a day or a week ; but it is a new state of life: no man, that is a habitual sinner, must come to this feast, till he hath wholly changed his course of life. And then, ac cording as the actions of infirmity have made less or greater invasion upon his peace and health, so are the acts of repentance to be proportioned; in which the greatness of the prevarications, their neighbourhood to death, or their frequent repetition, and the conduct of a spiritual man, are to give us counsel and determination. When a ravening and hungry wolf is destitute of prey, he eats the turf, and loads his stomach with the glebe he treads on; but as soon as he finds better food, he vomits up his first load. Our secular and sensual affections are loads of earth upon the conscience; and when we approach the table of the Lord, to eat the bread of the elect, and to drink the wine of angels, we must reject such impure adhesions, that holy persons, being nourished with holy symbols, may be sanctified, and receive the eternal reward of holiness. : But as none must come hither but they that are in the state of grace, or charity, and the love of God and their neighbours, and that the abolition of the state of sin is the necessary preparation, and is the action of years, and was not accepted as sufficient, till the expiration of divers years by the primitive discipline, and, in some cases, not till the approach of death so there is another preparation, which is of less necessity, which supposes the state of grace, and that oil is burning in our lamps; but yet it is a preparation of ornament, a trimming up the soul, a dressing the spirit with degrees and instances of piety, and progresses of perfection : and it consists in setting apart some portion of our time, before the communion, that it be spent in prayer, in meditations, in renewing the vows of holy obedience, in examining our consciences, in mortifying our lesser irregularities, in devotions and actions of precise religion, in acts of faith, of hope, of charity, of zeal and holy desires, in acts of eucharist or thanksgiving, of joy at the approach of so blessed an opportunity, and all the acts of virtue whatsoever, which have indefinite relation to this and to other mysteries; but yet are specially to be exercised upon this occasion, because this is the most perfect of external rites, and the most mysterious instrument of sanctification and perfection. There is no more time or degree to be determined in this preparation; but they " to whom much is forgiven, will love much;" and they-who understand the excellence and holiness of the mystery, the glory of the guest that comes to inhabit, and the indecency of the closet of their hearts, by reason of the adherences of impurity, the infinite benefit then designed, and the increase of degrees by the excellence of these previous acts of holiness-will not be too inquisitive into the necessity of circumstances and measures, but do it heartily and devoutly, and reverently, and as much as they can, ever esteeming it necessary, that actions of so great solemnity, should by some actions of piety, attending like handmaids, be distinguished from common employments, and remarked for the principal and most solemn of religious actions. The sum is this: After the greatest consociation of religious duties for preparation, no man can be sufficiently worthy to communicate: let us take care that we be not unworthy, by bringing a guilt with us, or the remanent affection to a sin. When the happy hour is come, in which the Lord vouchsafes to enter |