N02384:1304
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 48 (Question 12)
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.
First, CONCERNING the General Nature of Special Government; and it may admit of this Description.
SPECIAL Government is that whereby God Guides His Reasonable Creatures, to an everlasting State of Happiness or Misery, according to the Tenor of the Moral Law.
SPECIAL Government is that whereby God Guides His Reasonable Creatures, to an everlasting State of Happiness or M•sery, according to the Tenour of the Moral Law.
THAT we may rightly take up, and not be mistaken in this Description, let us distinctly consider the several things contained in it. Here then observe these following Propositions, which will lead us to the Things:
1. THE Reasonable Creature comes under a double Consideration; either as it hath something in common with other Natural Agents, or as it hath a special Nature distinct from them: And hence it is a Subject both of common and special Government. So far as all Creatures hold any thing in a Community, so they come under God's common Governing Providence. For this special doth not include those common considerations respecting this Subject. The general Laws of the Realm include under them all privileged Places, or Corporations considered as Subjects of the Kingdom; but their Charter-Privileges have something in peculiar. Consider Man in the natural respects wherein he agrees with other Beings, as Vegetable, Motive, Animal, and so all his natural Actions respect the former hibernation but look upon him as a Reasonable Creature; and thus he is a Subject of special Government.