N02384:1320
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.
3. HAPPINESS or Misery are the Reward or Punishment of the Creature according to some Rule, and the respect that his State and Actions bear to the Rule. Happiness therefore follows upon Eupraxy or Well-doing, Misery upon Evil-doing; but Man by Creation had done neither Good or Evil: And before he could, he must have a Rule given him, which must be the Measure of it; which belongs to this Government. Man had the Habits of Original Holiness and Righteousness, enabling him to bring forth the Actions of true Obedience, and so to be made Happy: But being mutable, he might miss and fail: Happiness was Conditionally promised him in the Covenant; but the actual Fruition of it, depended upon his Trial.
USE 2. LEARN hence, The Excellency of the Moral Law, in that it is a Rule of the Happiness of the Reasonable Creature: Isa. 56.2. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold on it: that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil. Jam. 1.25. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. The Law was not given Man for his Hurt, but Good; he could never have attained Blessedness without it; he must never have known the way of it, if he had not had this Rule to have guided him unto it. Man was deeply obliged unto God for giving him the Law, for without it he had been left in a Wilderness, and remained without Felicity forever.
USE 2. LEARN hence, The Excellency of the Moral Law, in that it is a Rule of the Happiness of the Reasonable Creature: Isa. 56.2. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that lay•th hold on it: that keepeth the sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil.