N02384:354
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 10 (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.] THE many mistakes, errors, false opinions which men have drawn from misunderstood & perverted Scriptures, is no argument necessarily to prove their obscurity. It must indeed be either in the Scriptures, or the men: if I understand not what another saith, the fault must be in him or me. Now there is a great deal of reason to be given why the Scriptures may be plain; and yet men not understand, or misunderstand them. For, 1. AS to the literal and historical sense of Scriptures. Tho' there be a faculty in man to know the Grammar & Logic of those discourses, yet there are carnal reasonings in us, backed with the natural enmity we bear against Divine Truth, which puts us upon wresting and perverting them, so as to accommodate them to our false principles and corrupt lusts; because we would bring all to speak according to our vain minds. And that is the reason Peter gives of some of Pauls writings being so hard. 2 Pet. 3.16, 17. —Things hard,—which they that are unlearned & un•••ble wrest. 2. AS to the spiritual understanding of these things, no wonder if natural men receive it not from the Scriptures, who have no spiritual faculty to receive it withal. Natural men therefore ⟨p. 32⟩are not competent judges in this case: as well may a blind mans word be taken, that the Sun hath no light in it; as well may we say that the rules of any Art are obscure, because a fool apprehends them not. Natural men are fools and blind in spiritual things; see 1 Cor. 2.14. But the natural men receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; neither can be know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
[4.] THE many mistakes, errors, false opinions which men have drawn from misunderstood & perverted Scriptures, is no argument necessarily to prove their obscurity. It must indeed be either in the Scriptures, or the men: if I understand not what another saith, the fault must be in him or me. Now there is a great deal of reason to be given why the Scriptures may be plain; and yet men not understand, or misunstand them. For, 1. AS to the literal and historical sense of Scriptures. Tho' there be a faculty in man to know the Grammar & Logick of those discourses, yet there are carnal reasonings in us, backed with the natural enmity we bear against Divine Truth, which puts us upon wresting and perverting them, so as to accommodate them to our false principles and corrupt lusts; because we would bring all to speak according to our vain minds. And that is the reason Peter gives of some of Pauls writings being so hard.