N02384:1527
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 56 (Question 16)
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.) THAT Adam's act in eating of the forbidden fruit was declared by the Law to be […] unrighteous all. God had severely forbids it to him. The Law had positively said that he should not eat of it; and that if he did, he should die for it. The act therefore was no sooner past, but the Law declared against it, and the sentence of the Law fell upon it. (2.) THIS Sir was in the first place imported to Adam himself. Gen. 3.17. Adam was the prime and personal offender; the action in which the Transgression was, was his own, he was the subject of it. God then laid […] to his particular charge, as the Person that was immediately interested and concerned in it. Every action as such, terminates in the subject, and so did this. (3.) BUT it did not rest here, but was […] charged to the account of his Posterity. Adam's sin is also become theirs, and that in the full merit of it, so far as it is a transgression of the Law, and breach of the Covenant, and brings the creature under the desert of the wrath of God; and they are legally accounted sinners. Though they have not committed sin in their own persons, yet because their persons were legally in him, as the person of the debtor is in the surety, as the person of the Prince is in the Ambassador. Hence it is all put down upon their account, ask gally as it is upon Adam's. They stand forth as delinquents, and are bound to answer for that sin. His act of treason hath tainted all of his blood and posterity deriving from him. (4.) IT was only that one singular act of ••• ing the forbidden fruit that was imputed. Hence in Rom. 5.16. we read that judgment was by one, i. e. by one act of disobedience, and the reason of it is this, because that act, and only that, which Adam did as he represented the whole stock of men, is or can be imputed his children. But this act Adam did, and none but this under such a consideration, representing of all Mankind. That none but this was accounted to him as a public person, appears, because no other but this peculiar act, was or is charged to the account his posterity. Adam's after actions were never mentioned in Scripture, with any such imputation ⟨p. 197⟩annexed to them; only this transgression is that which they are reckoned to hate an hand in.