N02384:1339
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 49 (Question 12 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.] WHEN it was made: viz. When God had Created Men. He was first made capable of Covenanting; and then he was Covenanted withal, so that it was not the •eer result of Creation, but consequent upon it, and falls under Government: And Man was no sooner made, and placed in his Station among the Creatures, but God enters into Bonds with him and takes him into Covenant: And the reason of this was, because Man was made capable of Happiness, now he could not be Happy without a Covenant. Those Glorious Rewards of Obedience could not become his due in any other way. He owed Service to God as he was his His Creature, but God owed him nothing, but what he should please freely to give him: Obedience was but His Duty, and there could have been no Merit in it, not could he have challenged a Reward of Life for it, if it had not been Covenanted for on this Condition; for God is voluntarily and not naturally obliged to any of his Creatures. Man no sooner was, but he was to serve God, and God immediately brought him under the strongest Engagements so to do.
[3] THE Excellency of this Covenant: It was a Covenant of Life. It is true, there was both Life & Death contained in it, (as will be observed) but it is called, a Covenant of Life, not only from the latter part of it, or the Promise, but also because this Covenant was therefore propounded to Man, that it may show to him the way of Life; and the Use which he was to make of the Threatening of Death affixed to it, was to make it an incentive to him to be more careful in his Obedience, that so be might live. It is a Covenant of Life in it self, of Death only by accident; Rom. 10.5. For Moses described the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things sh•• live by them. Man stood now a Probationer for Happiness or Misery; the Covenant told him how he might escape the one, and gain the other: by offering the Reward to encourage him, by threatening the Penalty to caution him,