N02384:1536
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 57 (Question 16 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. HE hath communicated to in the Guilt of his Transgression. Guilt is properly an obligation lying upon a person to undergo a penalty for a breach of some law, by virtue of a sentence past upon him, adjudging him thereunto. This may be enlarged upon hereafter, at present only let us observe, 1. THAT our first Parents had no sinner eaten the forbidden fruit, but they immediately became guilty. The sentence of the law threatening fell upon them, and they, came under the condemnation of it. This guilt forthwith took hold of their consciences, and it was the sense of it, which affrighted them so, as that they sought to hide themselves away from God, by reason of the terrors that it imprinted upon them. Gen. 3.10. I was afraid, and I hid my self. 2. THAT this guilt is derived from them to their Posterity. That it is so, the Scripture fully assures us, Rom. 3.19. Now we know that what things the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law: that every month may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. They are no sooner born than condemned; they come into the world under the sentence: the law hath found them sinners, and doomed them for it. They are fast bound in fetters of wrath to destruction: the wrath of God is out against them as soon as ever they are children of Adam. Eph. 2.3. By nature children of wrath. 3. THAT this guilt ariseth from the imputation of the first Transgression to them. Guilt alway supposeth an offence, which renders the man guilty. Now there is no personal transgression of their own to lay them under it, for it falls upon them before they have done good or evil, but it was that of our first Parents. This is called, the offence, emphatically, because it is charged on the whole race of men, Rom. 5.18. By the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation. And this must be by imputation. 4. THAT the equity of this follows from our union to the first Adam. Because we had all our inbeing in him, and God transacted with the whole kind in one Head. He covenanted for us, and we were obliged in him. If therefore it was just that such a Covenant might pass between God and the first man, it cannot be unjust, that all descending thus from him, should run the same risk with him.