N02384:1397
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 51 (Question 13 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.
1. IT was Gods pleasure to give man that […], which was to be the trial of his obedience: viz. respecting the Tree of Knowledge. And he did it on purpose f•ra trial; of which we may take a more distinct account when we come to it. But God would have man's obedience put to the proof; and it was with a purpose to let man know his own mutability: hence in prohibition given him, Gen. 2.17. 2. IT was God who ordered the Temptation which was leading eventually to man's fall. As he provided matter for the tempter to work upon, so he over-ruled the affair so as that man should be tempted. It is certain that there was the active concurse of God's efficacious influence in disposing of this matter; for there is no creature […] without him, Act. 17.28. The entity of every action, so much as a thought proceeds from him; and it is he that determines it to this or that; the Devil could not have thought of such a thing, nor come to Adam, not spoken any thing without a concurse of God's efficiency; and that is voluntary in God. 3. GOD determined the event of this Temptation: and therefore he influenced accordingly. God's efficiency gives being to all his […], and therefore, because he had decreed it, he brought it about by his permission, so […] there was more than a mere leaving it to contingency; His hand was in it, and it will appear how, if we add, 4. THAT God gave not to Adam these influence of conforming and assisting grace, that were needful to his standing. Adam had all habitual […] was requisite to a Creature so concerned; but a Creature hath a necessary dependence on the Creator, for its concurring […] to all its actions; without which it […] nothing. Now Adam had not these […] upon him in […] of the temptation, but was left to himself; for if he had be would not have fallen; God could […] assisted him and kept him, but he did […]. And, 5. THE •••rful efficiency of God, […] of disobedience in which man's fall […] accomplished. Not only did he suspend his a••••tance but he also influenced the act itself; else it had never been; all action it entirely from the superior cause; Adam •ould never have looked on the fruit: nor […] about it, nor consented to eat it, […] stirred his hand to take it, nor opened his mouth to taste it, if there had not been an-active concurse of the divine power […] him in the very act, thus to exert all these powers of his. 6.