N02384:1368
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 50 (Question 13)
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.] IT is called an Offence, Rom. 5.17. The Word properly signify• a Fall which is tak•• […] stumbling at something which lies in one way: And here it is applied to Adam's total Apostasy; and it serves most aptly to express the ru••• Estate into which Man hath cast himself; […] there are. Three or Four Senses in which it […] used, all of which give light in this Affair. (1.) IT signifies a falling besides ones Ai• […] Mark which he should have gone to: And […] was the very Nature of the Apostasy; for i• it Man fell beside his Rule, which should […] guided him to his End, and so he mist of that: he declined from the Law which God gave him to direct him to this Happiness, and so he fell quite beside it. Adam should have gone by Rule, and so have reached to his End; his coming short of so doing, was the procuring Cause of his Fall. (2.) IT is a falling down, a declining; or […] loss of a Man's excellent Estate, and that by stumbling at something thrown in his way; and so it farther expresseth the Apostasy. Man stumbled at his Rule, and so he fell. There was a Question of the verity of God's Promise & Threatening cast before him; and this gave him such a ⟨p. 157⟩Trip, that it threw him down: He was in an high Place of Eminency and Dignity, exalted above his fellow Creatures, stood next to his Maker; but now he is brought into a low, a mean, and an ignoble State: was made free; but is now become a Servant of Servants. (3.) IT intimates a falling from one Object to another. A deserting of one thing, for something else. Such was the Apostasy: Man's proper Object is GOD, whose Face and Glory he was to view, and in the Enjoyment of whom he was to be Happy; but he changed his Object, and chose something besides God to close withal: He chose the Creature instead of God, to seek his Happiness from: For that is the Sum of Man's Apostasy, Rom. 1.25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator. (4.) BY a Metonymy of the Cause, it signifies the Ruin of a thing. The Fall and the Ruin of a thing are one and the same thing in Scripture Language; compare,