N02384:1398
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.
[…] in all these things the Providence of God without any blame; which will be evi••• these things, (1) WE must distinguish between a physical and a moral Cause. All blame relates to a ••ral cause; not to one merely physical. Blame arise•• from a doing that which one ought not to do, or not doing what he ought, and so he that command or persuades another by argument to a sin is guilty and blame worthy, but no such thing can be charged on God's Providence, for he for had man upon pain of death, Gen. 2.17. hence, Jam. 1.12. Let no man say […] is tempted, I am tempted of God for God cannot be tempted with evil. neither tempteth be are man. (2.) WE must ••so distinguish between a cause of the act, and a cause of the obliquity of it. Every a•t hath an Entity in it; and is so far good; the Obliquity of this the evil. And that is as it bears a respect to a rule, which is broken •y it: and this is of a mee• moral consideration. Now the […] belongs to Efficiency, and so cannot be will •ut divine concurse; but the sinfulness of it, is a deficiency moral in it, and therefore belongs only to the creature: •hence that, Act. 2.23. Him being delivered by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. (3.) ADAM did not cant those influences, 'till he was willing to want them. That man could not obey unless he had divine assistance, belonged to his nature, as he was a dependent Being, which is a property of every second Being, inseparable from •t; and he could not but know it, by the light of nature which he had. Tha• it was his du•y, as such a creature to have rectified his dependence by asking it of God, is not to be doubted. Prayer is a natural duy, belonging o natural worship, and is an acknowledgement of that dependence; had Adam asked help of God, and it had been denied him, he might have had something to plead; but he consented to be without them, in the very Temptation he had influences which preserved the […] of grace in him 'till he put t away, he […] wanted such as were for the acting of […] bit; and he, by entertaining the Temptation into deliberation on the offer of it, willingly was without them. (4.)