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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
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.
SOME Readers indeed may find the Author less exact in his Philosophical Schemes & Principles, which happen to be of a more ancient Date, and not so suited to the Opinions reigning in the present Age. In anticipation of which we need only observe, that in such things as these every Person is entirely left to his own Freedom without Offence; that the internal Nature of Things being so extremely incluse and hidden, many or our Philosophical Schemes have been but mere Hypotheses subsisting only in the Imaginations of Men, and being unsoundly raised from a few imperfect Observations of the Appearances & Events of Nature, have been successively thrown out by others as unstable as they; and that our. Author chiefly flourished when we where but just emerging out of those Obscurities. But what is more material to be observed here is, that he by no means therefore adopts or takes those uncertain Theories into the System of Religion, which will for ever remain the same through' all the successive Changes of Philosophy: He only uses them as a convenient means of ranking the various Creatures in a clearer and more conspicuous Order, than if he had made no Divisions or formed no Systems of them: His great Intent being to treat them in a Theological, and not in a strict Physical or Philosophical manner: and in such a view only we would desire the Reader therefore to consider them.
SOME Readers indeed may find the Author less exact in his Philosophical Schemes & Principles, which happen to be of a more ancient Date, and not so suited to the Opinions reigning in the present Age. In anticipation of which we need only observe, that in such things as these every Person is intirely left to his own Freedom without Offence; that the internal Nature of Things being so extreamly incluse and hidden, many or our Philosophical Schemes have been but mere Hypotheses subsisting only in the Imaginations of Men, and being unsoundly rais'd from a few imperfect Observations of the Appearances & Events of Nature, have been successively thrown out by others as unstable as they; and that our. Author chiefly flourish'd when we where but just emerging out of those Obscurities. But what is more material to be observed here is, that he by no means therefore adopts or takes those uncertain Theories into the System of Religion, which will for ever remain the same thro' all the successive Changes of Philosophy: He only uses them as a convenient means of ranking the various Creatures in a clearer and more conspicuous Order, than if he had made no Divisions or form'd no Systems of them: His great Intent being to treat them in a Theological, and not in a strict Physical or Philosophical manner: and in such a view only we wou'd desire the Reader therefore to consider them.