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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.
BUT if by Systematical Divinity be meant the diligent searching into the Nature Connection and Importance of divine Truths from the Holy Scriptures, and then according to them the representing those Truths in the certain Order & Relation they appear to have among themselves; This is but the very Exercise of Humane Reason on the Sacred Oracles, and our Discoursing answerably to it's internal Exercise and Discoveries. For humane Reasoning is nothing else but a thinking in order, a surveying, comparing and discovering the various Natures & Connections of things; and humane Speech is agreeable thereto an orderly Expression of those Discoveries. In short it is impossible for us either to think or to discourse like Men, but we must do so more or less in a Systematical manner: we must take a part of a System at least, tho' not the whole: There must be a Connection of things expressed or imagined, as there really is among the things themselves: or else we discourse and think at random without any order: and this is nothing but irrational, and wild Confusion, a perfect Anarchy in Thought, a mere Harangue in Language, unworthy the excellent Powers of Men, and not agreeable to the Nature and Respects of things; which is always therefore to be avoided by us, and more especially in our conceiving and treating of divine and heavenly Subjects.
BUT if by Systematical Divinity be meant the diligent searching into the Nature Connection and Importance of divine Truths from the Holy Scriptures, and then according to them the representing those Truths in the certain Order & Relation they appear to have among themselves; This is but the very Exercise of Humane Reason on the Sacred Oracles, and our Discoursing answerably to it's internal Exercise and Discoveries. For humane Reasoning is nothing else but a thinking in order, a surveying, comparing and discovering the various Natures & Connections of things; and humane Speech is agreable thereto an orderly Expression of those Discoveries. In short it is impossible for us either to think or to discourse like Men, but we must do so more or less in a Systematical manner: we must take a part of a System at least, tho' not the whole: There must be a Connection of things express'd or imagin'd, as there really is among the things themselves: or else we discourse and think at random without any order: and this is nothing but irrational, and wild Confusion, a perfect Anarchy in Tho't, a meer Harrangue in Language, unworthy the excellent Powers of Men, and not agreable to the Nature and Respects of things; which is always therefore to be avoided by us, and more especially in our conceiving and treating of divine and heavenly Subjects.