A96532:140
The doctrine of the covenant of redemption Wherein is laid the foundation of all…
The doctrine of the covenant of redemption Wherein is laid the foundation of all our hopes and happiness. Briefly opened and improved. By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. [Three lines from Psalms]
Boston: printed by Benj. Harris over against the Old-Meet, 1693
Chapter 10: The necessity of this Covenant, in order to Mans Salvation.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
1. That Holiness and Justice are Divine Essential Perfections. Every Attribute of God, is God displaying of himself to us after such a manner: and though these are manifold as they come to our understandings, yet they are in him one and the same undivided Being. They are the ⟨p. 70⟩things by which he maketh himself known to the Creature: and if he were not such an one in himself they would be a false Representation, which is blasphemy to suppose. If there were no Creature to be the Subject of the Application of these, yet God would be, and is everlastingly Holy and Just: for if he will make himself appear to be so in his Works, it is because he is so in his Nature.
2. That in all his Works of Efficiency, he aims at the Declaration of the Glory of his own Perfections. What else is the Declarative Glory of God, but a display of his Essential Glory to the Creature, so far as he sees meet? He had all in himself before there was a World; but he would have a World to be a Mirror of his Perfections; and those to be in it who should be able to read them, and acknowledge him therein; and therefore these are to declare it, Psal. 19. and he is said to be known by them.
2. That in all his Works of Efficiency, he aims at the Declaration of the Glory of his own Perfections. What else is the Declarative Glory of God, but a display of his Essential Glory to the Creature, so far as he sees meet? He had all in himself before there was a World; but he would have a World to be a Mirrour of his Perfections; and those to be in it who should be able to read them, and acknowledge him therein; and therefore these are to declare it, Psal. 19. and he is said to be known by them.