N02384:1414
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 52 (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.
(4.) THIS pride led them to disdain the special office which God had set them in. The nature of their fall is described in, J•d. 6. The Angels which kept […] their first […], but left their own habitation. They left it, and we have observed that it was pride that made them to leave it; and therefore they did it in disdain; and the word, state signifies a Magistracy, or an high office that is put upon persons, this was it that they l•ft. It could not be their nature, for they could not charge it for a better; it could not be their order in the Creation, for there was •o higher; it could not be their habitation in Heaven, for it was the most glorious, and therefore it must be their office; and here was the matter of their indignation. For, 1. THEY were conscious of their own excellency, and dignity. As Angels, they excelled in Knowledge, so that they could not but know themselves to be the master-pieces of the works of God; to surpass in all excellent endowments, every other piece of the Creation: they did so in reality, and they had a power of reflection upon themselves by which they were able to discern it. 2. THEY knew man to be in a lower order of being than themselves. This is consequent on the former; though they could not but discern man to be the ma•ter-piece of the visible Creation, and adorned with a great many excellent endowments, and to be in his spiritual faculties and perfections •kin to themselves, yet as to his bodily frame to be raised ou• of the Dust; and in many respects to be of an inferior order; Psal. 8.5. Then hast made him a little lower th•n the Angels. 3. HENCE they reckoned themselves to be degraded, in being employed to minister for man. Their service appeared to them to be dishonourable, it was below their dignity, and unworthy of such noble Creatures; pride now enters […] •hem, when they reflect upon themselves, and their office, and it tells them they are too high, and too good to wait upon so mean a personage as man, and they know not how to brook it. 4. THIS raised in them a disdain or contempt of their service. They scorned it, their minds rose up against it, and would not suffer them to comply with it: […] hereupon they resolved not to perform it; their pride would not give them ve to stoop to such a peasant as man. 5. HEREUPON they are filled with Malice against God and: […].