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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.
4. THAT if the light of Nature, were as clear in man now as it was at first, yet his Inability to follow it, renders it unprofitable to him. The impotency, which is in natural men, to obey the demands of the Law, cuts them off from a capacity of improving the greatest discoveries they can make of it, to their advantage & happiness. For if men know & do not, their Guilt is aggravated; but fallen man can not do, not so much as the thing which he knows ought to be done. Whereas happiness is not in bare knowing, but doing. Joh. 13.17. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. So that the utmost that this light doth for the man, is to set […] see that he is undone: and the more discoveries he makes by it, the more conviction he hath of his great Infelicity.
4. THAT if the light of Nature, were as clear in man now as it was at first, yet his Inability to follow it, renders it unprofitable to him. The impotency, which is in natural men, to obey the demands of the Law, cuts them off from a capacity of improving the greatest discoveries they can make of it, to their advantage & happiness. For if men know & do not, their Guilt is aggravated; but fallen man can not do, not so much as the thing which he knows ought to be done. Whereas happiness is not in bare knowing, but doing. Joh. 13.17. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. So that the utmost that this light doth for the man, is to set 〈…〉 see that he is undone: and the more discoveries he makes by it, the more conviction he hath of his great Infelicity.
5. THAT the light of Nature makes no discovery to man of any other may to attain his end and be happy, besides what was exhibited in the Covenant of works. And here let it be observed, — 1. THAT man by the light of Nature could never have known, that there was any other possible way for God to be glorified in man's salvation. Fallen Adam knew himself to be miserable, cursed, under a sentence of Condemnation; that Justice was engaged against him;