antepast

Antepast of Heaven: Eating and Drinking in Early English Methodism, Charles I.

Astell's community is founded upon an educational regimen that is not in the first instance oriented toward usefulness in the world: "in fine, the place to which you are invited is a Type and Antepast of Heav'n, where your Employment will be as there, to magnify GOD, to love one another, and to communicate that useful knowledge which by the due improvement of your time in Study and Contemplation you will obtain, and which when obtain'd, will afford you a much sweeter and more durable delight, than all those pitiful diversions, those revellings and amusements, which now thro your ignorance of better, appear the only grateful and relishing Entertainments" (151).

The eucharist is also food for a journey and an anticipation (antepast) of the coming heavenly banquet.