Traditional Anglican Sermons

The Benefits Of Private Confession Before Communion (What you won't hear in the Warren-gate and Hinn-gate Baptistic and Pentecostalistic worlds)

Anonymous (17th century)

I SHALL add but one thing more concerning the things which are to be done before the Sacrament [i.e. Holy Communion], and that is an advice, that if any person upon a serious view of himself cannot satisfy his own soul of his sincerity, and so doubts whether he may come to the Sacrament, he do not rest wholly on his own judgement in the case. For if he be a truly humbled soul, it is likely he may judge too hardly of himself; if he be not, it is odds, but if he be left to the satisfying his own doubts, he will quickly bring himself to pass too favourable a sentence. Or whether he be the one or the other, if he come to the Sacrament in that doubt, he certainly plunges himself into further doubts and scruples, if not into sin; on the other side if he forbear because of it, if that fear be a causeless one, then he groundlessly absents himself from that holy ordinance, and so deprives his soul of the benefits of it. Therefore in the midst of so many dangers which attend the mistake of himself, I would, as I said before, exhort him not to trust to his own judgement, but to make known his case to some discreet and godly Minister, and rather be guided by his, who will probably (if the case be duly and without any disguise discovered to him) be better able to judge of him than he of himself. This is the counsel the Church gives in the Exhortation before the Communion, where it is advised that if any by other means there fore-mentioned “cannot quiet his own conscience, but require further counsel and comfort, then let him go to some discreet and learned Minister of God’s Word and open his grief, that he may receive such ghostly counsel, advice, and comfort that his conscience may be relieved, etc.”This is surely such advice as should not be neglected, neither at the time of coming to the Sacrament nor any other when we are under any fear or reasons of doubt concerning the state of our souls. And for want of this many have run into very great mischief, having let the doubt fester so long, that it hath either plunged them into deep distresses of conscience, or which is worse they have, to still that disquiet within them, betaken themselves to all sinful pleasures, and so quite cast off all care of their souls.

From "The Whole Duty Of Man", Sunday III, §§ 21–23. Edit. London, 1684, pp. 87–90. The work was probably written by Richard Allestree (1619-1691).

Traditional Anglican Sermons