N02384:1206
A complete body of divinity in two hundred and fifty expository lectures on the…A compleat body of divinity in two hundred and fifty expository lectures on the…
A complete body of divinity in two hundred and fifty expository lectures on the Assembly's Shorter catechism wherein the doctrines of the Christian religion are unfolded, their truth confirmed, their excellence displayed, their usefulness improved; contrary errors & vices refuted & exposed, objections answered, controversies settled, cases of conscience resolved; and a great light thereby reflected on the present age. / By the Reverend & learned Samuel Willard, M.A. late Pastor of the South Church in Boston, and vice-president of Harvard College in Cambridge, in New-England. ; Prefaced by the pastors of the same church. ; [Six lines of Scripture texts]A compleat body of divinity in two hundred and fifty expository lectures on the Assembly's Shorter catechism wherein the doctrines of the Christian religion are unfolded, their truth confirm'd, their excellence display'd, their usefulness improv'd; contrary errors & vices refuted & expos'd, objections answer'd, controversies settled, cases of conscience resolv'd; and a great light thereby reflected on the present age. / By the Reverend & learned Samuel Willard, M.A. late Pastor of the South Church in Boston, and vice-president of Harvard College in Cambridge, in New-England. ; Prefac'd by the pastors of the same church. ; [Six lines of Scripture texts]
printed by B. Green and S. Kneeland for B. Eliot and D. Henchman, 1726
AN EXPOSITION OF THE ASSEMBLY's SHORTER CATECHISM: IN Two Hundred a… › Sermon 44 (Question 11 cont.)
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. MEDIATE Providence, is that whereby God looks after the Affairs of the World, by improving of Secondary Causes, in the carrying on His […] Design. Tho' both the Being & Operations of Second Causes are from the First Cause Efficiently, yet they are the next Causes of their own Actions Formally: And hence, with respect to such Effects as are produced by them, God is said to work Mediately, (i. e.) in and by them, because they do nothing but what He enableth them to do by His Influence, as well as Determines by His Decree. And here Three Conclusions may be Observed, 1. THAT God could as well Work all without them, as with them. It is all one to Him as to Ability which way he Works: It is as easy to Him to bring about His Projects without the Mediation of Second Causes, as by it: for when there are never so many of these at Work, they must be all of them Influenced and Enabled by Him; else they can do nothing: If He be with them, let them be never so Mean, they prosper; if He be away, be they never so Potent, they fail 2 Chron. 14.11. Lord, it is nothing with Thee to holy, whether with many, or them that have no p•••r. 2. THAT hence, God doth not use Me•• in Instruments, through any Defect of Virtue is […], but out of the Abundance of his Goodness. He wants not Virtue, for He gives them all them; but He is willing to put some dignity of Efficiency upon the Creature; and by th• […] Causes to render His own Efficiency the mo•• Observable Hence, in the […] ••• nent Works of providence, God useth such Men many times as have the least Aptitude or A•• ty in them to bring them about, A mo• 5.9. […] strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, 2 Chron. 24.24. 1 Cor. 1.27, 28. Judg. 7.2. 3. THE Second Cause Acts, tho' Medley, yet as Properly and Really, as if there were […] First Cause. The Being and the Actings of the one, do not destroy the Being and the Actings of the other; No, not in the very same Actions God Acts Efficiently and Influentially; the Creature Acts Instrumentally and Formally: God Acts as the First & Supreme; the Creature as the Second, as a Subordinate Cause.