Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE COMMUNICANT'S COMPANION. CHAPTER I. THE NAMES BY WHICH THIS ORDINANCE IS USUALLY CALLED. In discoursing of this great and solemn ordinance, which every serious Christian looks upon with a peculiar regard and veneration, I purpose, as God shall enable me, to open the doctrine as well as the duty of it: it will therefore be proper enough, and I hope profitable to take some notice of the several names by which it is known. I. We call it the sacrament. This is the name we commonly give it, but improperly, because it doth not distinguish it from the ordinance of baptism, which is as much a sacrament as this; a sacrament which we have all received, by which we are all bound, and are concerned to improve, and live up to: but, when we call this ordinance, the sacrament, we ought to remind ourselves that it is a sacrament; that is, it is a sign, and it is an oath. 1. It is a sign, an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace; for such sacraments are dpsigned to be. It is a parable to the eye; and in it God uses similitudes, as he did of old by his servants the prophets. In it Christ tells us earthly things, that thereby we may come to be more familiarly acquainted, and more warmly affected, with spiritual and heavenly things. In it Christ speaks to us in our ovrn language, and accommodates himself to the capacities of oui present state. Man consists of bpdy and soul, and the soul admits impressions, and exerts its power, by the body; here is an ordinance, therefore, which consist? of body arid soul too, wherein Christ, and the benefits of the new covenant, are, in the instituted elements of bread and wine, set before us, and offered to us. We live in a world of sense, not yet in a world of spirits; and, because we therefore find it hard to look ab...