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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 4 (Question 2)
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.
3. HENCE there was a fixed or stated way, to which Man's being made happy was restrained. For, if Happiness were not promised to man absolutely, but hypothetically, it must needs depend upon that •hy• ••••is; and the performance of the Condition is the way to his felicity: and that this was fixed, is therein evident, because together with a firm Promise made to him, That if he obeyed, he should be happy, there was as strong a Threatening, That if he came short of it, he should undoubtedly be miserable, Gen. 2.17.
3. HENCE there was a fixed or stuted way, to which Man's being made happy was restrained. For, if Happiness were not promised to man absolutely, but hypothetically, it must needs depend upon that •hy• ••••is; and the performance of the Condition is the way to his felicity: and that this was fixed, is therein evident, because together with a firm Promise made to him, That if he obeyed, he should be happy, there was as strong a Threatning, That if he came short of it, he should undoubtedly be miserable, Gen. 2.17.
4. HE could neither find nor keep this way, without a Rule of direction; and consequently could never have reached blessedness. He could never have known, when he served to his end, or when he mist of it. He had been lost in a wilderness, out of which he could not have gotten, but must have been at an utter Loss. In sum, there was a Medium between a state of Innocence, and a state of Felicity: there was a way to pass safe to it, and a way to miss of it. And to enable him to choose the one, and avoid the other, he must have a Rule.