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YET we ought not to suspend ourselves from the Lord's Communion because
we confess ourselves sinners, but should more and more eagerly hasten to it
for the healing of our soul, and purifying of our spirit, and seek the
rather a remedy for our wounds with humility of mind and faith, as
considering ourselves unworthy to receive so great grace. Otherwise we
cannot worthily receive the Communion even once a year, as some do, who
live in monasteries and so regard the dignity and holiness and value of the
heavenly sacraments, as to think that none but saints and spotless persons
should venture to receive them, and not rather that they would make us
saints and pure by taking them. And these thereby fall into greater
presumption and arrogance than what they seem to themselves to avoid,
because at the time when they do receive them, they consider that they are
worthy to receive them. But it is much better to receive them every Sunday
for the healing of our infirmities, with that humility of heart, whereby we
believe and confess that we can never touch those holy mysteries worthily,
than to be puffed up by a foolish persuasion of heart, and believe that at
the year's end we are worthy to receive them. Wherefore that we may be able
to grasp this and hold it fruitfully, let us the more earnestly implore the
Lord's mercy to help us to perform this, which is learnt not like other
human arts, by some previous verbal explanation, but rather by experience
and action leading the way; and which also unless it is often considered
and hammered out in the Conferences of spiritual persons, and anxiously
sifted by daily experience and trial of it, will either become obsolete
through carelessness or perish by idle forgetfulness.
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