John Flavel on the Value of Communion

“This ordinance hath a direct and peculiar tendency to the improvement and strengthening of faith. It is a pledge superadded to the promise for faith’s sake: Heavenly and sublime mysteries do therein stoop down to your senses, that you may have the clearer apprehensions of them; and the clearer the apprehensions are, the stronger the assent of faith must needs be: By this seal also the promise comes to be more ratified to us; and the firmer the promise appears to the soul, the more bold and adventurous faith is in casting itself upon it.” [Flavel, Works, VI:45]

- Quoted in J. Stephen Yuille. The Inner Sanctum of Puritan Piety: John Flavel’s Doctrine of Mystical Union with Christ(Reformation Heritage Books, 2007), p. 102