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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
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.
Q. WHETHER a Man ought willingly to be Dimmed. so God's Glory may be advanced by it?
Q. WHETHER a Man ought willingly to be Dimned. so God's Glory may be advanced by it?
Answ. A Willingness to be Damned is inconsistent with a true Desire that God may be Glorified: Because it separateth those things which God hath made inseparable: It supposeth a clashing in that very Order, which God hath put between the End and the Means: It must there are presume a Consent that God should be false to his Word and Promise, which militates against his Glory; or else a Willingness to neglect the Duties to which the Promise is made; which is to consent to our own actual dishonouring of him: neither of which are consistent with our sincere aiming at our Last End.
THERE are indeed two Scripture-examples, that seem to make for the contrary Conclusion: that of M•ses, Exod. 32.32. and ⟨p. 5⟩of Paul Rom. 9 3.—But if throughly weighed, they will not evince it. Both of them are of One Tenor, and neither looks immediately to the Glory of God, but to express an exuberant Affection to their People: Neither of them in their extent are justifiable. God himself seems to testify against, and tacitly to reprove that of Moses, ver. 33. and Paul expresseth himself in the Potential Mood, I could wish, &c. q. d. I have such an endeared Love to my Kindred, that I am at the Point of so wishing; I could do it, if it were lawful: It is a pathetical Expression of an hyperbolical Affection. It must needs therefore be an ensnaring Trial that is put upon the Children of God, when this is offered as a Rule to prove their Sincerity by. He that insatiably desires to be saved and yet resolves to be saved in no other way but that wherein God may be Glorified, certainly is the Man, whose Ends are rightly fixed.