N02384:1439
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 53 (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. THAT the Serpent therefore was merely pastor in this design. The Devil, by divine permission, entered into the Serpent, and managed it himself for his own design: orders its tongue and frames it to speak such words as he articulated by it; for surely, the Serpent understood not what he said: for, who should infuse that understanding into him? we have no reason to think that God did, as once miraculously to Balaam's Ass: but we are not to suppose that the Devil who is himself a creature, should be able to put knowledge into a brute, and enable it to discourse understandingly. He therefore only made use of the natural subtlety of the Serpent to be subservient to an higher design than that could understand.
4. THAT the Serpent therefore was meerly pastor in this design. The Devil, by divine permission, entred into the Serpent, and managed it himself for his own design: orders its tongue and frames it to speak such words as he articulated by it; for surely, the Serpent understood not what he said: for, who should infuse that understanding into him? we have no reason to think that God did, as once miraculously to Balaams Ass: but we are not to suppose that the Devil who is himself a creature, should be able to put knowledge into a brute, and enable it to discourse understandingly. He therefore only made use of the natural subtlety of the Serpent to be subservient to an higher design than that could understand.
5. THAT hence the Serpent was no blameable cause of the Apostasy. The Devil in it was to blame, and the more for abusing any one of God's creatures, to subserve to the greatest piece of mischief that ever was done in the world; but the Serpent itself was not at all to be blamed. Blame is only merited by a fault that is committed; and every fault is a voluntary transgression of a moral law prohibiting it, and such a law can be […] to none but causes by counsel; and he••• no unreasonable creature can be blame-worthy by any of its actions: inasmuch as it always acts the nature that was put into it, unless it be acted by some other besides its nature, and beyond its apprehension, where it is purely passive.