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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 5 (Question 2 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. THAT Man by his fall mist of the happiness offered in the first Covenant, & brought himself under a condition of misery. Man's happiness consists in the glorifying of God, & enjoying him: and the fall cut him oft from both. From the former, Rom. 3.23. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God: From the latter. Isa. 59 2. Your iniquities have separated between you and your God. And hence he fell from Life into a state of Death: for therein did the Curse consist. Gen. 2.17. In the day that thou •atest thereof, thou shalt surely die. So that all the Children of men are not only born capable of Misery: But they are born actually miserable. Hence this Death is said to be past upon all men, Rom. 5.12.
2. THAT fallen man is no longer capable of being made happy by that Covenant. For, though his happiness be still in attaining his end, and his end be still the same that ever it was, yet it is not to be advanced by him in that way wherein it was at first prescribed: and this, not by reason of any default in the Law or Covenant, (that is holy, & just and good) but by reason of his own Impotency. Rom. 7.13, 14. Was then that which is good, made death unto me? God forbid. For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. And here is a double Impotency expressed in the two Phrases: — Ca•nal, i. e. Sinful naturally and habitually; and so not able to keep the Law, by which God may be glorified, and I perform the Condition of Life: — Sold under Sin, i. e. under the Sentence of Condemnation; not able to make Satisfaction, and remove the Curse. So that this Covenant speaks nothing but terror and despair. to all those that are held under the Conditions of it.