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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 13 (Question 4 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.
5. THE Comprehension of a thing, is the exact and adequate knowledge of it. It is a word used of Bodies, that have quantity in them; and is when one body grasps another within it self, so that nothing is left out. One thing then is comprehended by another, when it is adequately contained in it, so that nothing of the thing contained be without the thing containing. The word is hence Metaphorically translated to the understanding; and it is, when the whole Object is so contained in the mind, that nothing, in the thing comprehended, is beyond its knowledge: all of it is so seen, as nothing escapes the eye of the mind. In a word, that is comprehended which is perfectly known, which is known so far as it is observable: and this knowledge doth imply an Adequation, or perfect equality of the Understanding to the thing understood.
6. THE Knowledge, Comprehension, and Apprehension of GOD, are not really distinct things. The apprehension of God essentially, or as he is in himself, is a comprehensive knowledge of him. To comprehend, apprehend, perceive, and throughly to know God, are all one. The Apprehension of God's Essence, is the knowledge of his whole Essence; and he that knows it all, comprehends it: he that knows the essence, contains the whole essence in his knowledge; for there is nothing in the Divine Essence besides it self: there is nothing contained in God, but what is absolutely God. Compound beings may be apprehended, when they are not comprehended; but so cannot the uncompounded being of God.
FROM these considerations, we may proceed to the particular confirmation of the Proposition, viz. That the first Being is not knowable by us, as he is in himself. And there are two heads, to which the demonstration may be referred.