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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 7 (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.
IT will here therefore not be amiss to consider, How God hath communicated himself to his Church from the beginning? And here take these Rules.
1. THAT God in the infancy of his Church taught them by Revelation & Tradition. As to what concerns the state of man in innocency, it is not to our purpose. And respecting the relics of the law on the minds of the fallen men, it is certain that they have no natural light telling them how to improve them to their great end: so that Revelation was necessary, if man ever obtain salvation. No sooner therefore had Adam fallen under the curse of the first covenant, but God revealed to him the way of recovery by the second, (Gen. 3.15.) And during the time that followed, till Moses, God made known his mind to some of his servants, by Christ's appearing to the Patriarchs, declaring his counsels to them, & giving them direction how he would be served; by sending Angels to them on frequent occasions; by inspiring them extraordinarily; by coming to them in dreams & visions, &c. which discoveries of his to them, were handed from one to another, and taught by Fathers to their Children; and this during the long lives of those Patriarchs, served for the continuation of the Rule among the People of God: although' by degrees the generality ⟨p. 21⟩of mankind lost the sense of the true Religion, and degenerated, before the flood, to all manner of Immorality; and after it, to Paganish Idolatry, as Scripture-records sufficiently inform us.
1. THAT God in the infancy of his Church taught them by Revelation & Tradition. As to what concerns the state of man in innocency, it is not to our purpose. And respecting the relicks of the law on the minds of the fallen men, it is certain that they have no natural light telling them how to improve them to their great end: so that Revelation was necessary, if man ever obtain salvation. No sooner therefore had Adam fallen under the curse of the first convenant, but God revealed to him the way of recovery by the scond, (