N02384:1669
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 62 (Question 19)
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 God is the objective happiness of the reasonable creature. Every being that is capable of happiness, must have an object to make it so. God who is absolutely the first Being, is His own object, and consequently His own felicity, the second Being must have its happiness from abroad, and therefore its object must be out of it felt, and every one is not sufficient, because nothing else will happify, but that which can give complete satisfaction, which no other Being is able to do for the reasonable creature, but God alone. Hence that, Psalm 73.23. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides that. There is nothing else that can, for suitableness, for fullness for duration, answer all the reachings of such a Being; as hath been fully evinced under the first question.
1. THAT God is the objective happiness of the reasonable creature. Every being that is capable of happiness, must have an object to make it so. God who is absolutely the first Being, is His own object, and consequently His own felicity, the second Being must have its happiness from abroad, and therefore its object must be out of it selt, and every one is not sufficient, because nothing else will happify, but that which can give compleat satisfaction, which no other Bei•g is able to do for the reasonable creature, but God alone. Hence that, Psalm 73.23. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides that. There is nothing else that can, for suitableness, for fulness for duration, answer all the reachings of such a Being; as hath been fully evinced under the first question.
2. THAT hence mens actual felicity must needs derive from Communion with this Object. Active blessedness is properly a resultancy from the closing of the faculty with its object, and deriving from it that which giveth it satisfaction: except there be a participation in it, and the continued influence of it upon the subject, it is not happy. Hence