N00458:166
The barren fig trees doom. Or, A brief discourse wherein is set forth the…
The barren fig trees doom. Or, A brief discourse wherein is set forth the woeful danger of all who abide unfruitful under Gospel privileges, and Gods husbandry. Being the substance of sixteen sermons preached on Christ's parable of the fig-tree. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. ; [Four lines from Matthew]The barren fig trees doom. Or, A brief discourse wherein is set forth the woful danger of all who abide unfruitful under Gospel priviledges, and Gods husbandry. Being the substance of sixteen sermons preached on Christ's parable of the fig-tree. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. ; [Four lines from Matthew]
Boston: printed by Benjamin Harris, 1691
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.
2. Hence it follows that he must certainly be Omniscient. If he be every where, he ⟨p. 58⟩must needs know every thing. Not only doth God assume this Attribute to himself, but it also is necessarily inferred from his Omnipresence. We are to conceive of God under the Notion of an Intelligent Being; knowledge is therefore ascribed to him; and that not in the concrete only but in the abstract, without an Hyperbole, Prov. 8. 14. I am Understanding, wheresoever then God is, he is there by his knowledge: his knowledge is his Being, and must be Inseparable from it; and, because his perfections are himself, and he is an undivided Being, where he is, there he is in all his Attributes; although he makes the manifestations of them to the Creatures according to his Pleasure.
2. Hence it follows that he must certainly be Omniscient. If he be every where, he ⟨p. 58⟩must needs know every thing. Not only doth God assume this Atribute to himself, but it also is necessarily inferred from his Omnipresence. We are to conceive of God under the Notion of an Intelligent Being; knowledg is therefore ascribed to him; and that not in the concrete only but in the abstract, without an Hyperbole, Prov. 8. 14. I am Understanding, wheresoever then God is, he is there by his knowledge: his knowledge is his Being, and must be Inseperable from it; and, because his perfections are himself, and he is an undivided Being, where he is, there he is in all his Attributes; although he makes the manifestations of them to the Creatures according to his Pleasure.
3. This Omniscience of God must needs comprise in it a distinct knowledge of all Creatures in particular, a•• all their action. Universal Understanding cannot be Confined merely to Universals or to Generals, but it must reach to individuals; and that not merely as to their beings or natures, but their actions too; none of these must be hid from him; nay it saith that he minds, regards, takes particular notice of them; he is for this reason said to count them,