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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.
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.
(1.) THAT our Reason is not able to grasp in the knowledge of him. It cannot entertain the quidditative conception of him. It is certain, that man knows nothing, but by some Rule of reason, which is the carrier between God & man: all things which are conveyed into out understandings, are handed to them in a Logical way: and we come to know them, by seeing into the reasons of them. But our reason is not able to apprehend God essentially. And that, 1. BECAUSE there is no equal proportion between the faculty & the Object. We heard, that the Object known must be (some way) in the faculty knowing: and hence it follows of necessity, that there must be a due proportion between these two. But now there is an infinitely vast distance between God & the creature: the most extendedly vast created understanding, is still ⟨p. 42⟩a finite understanding; but God is Infinite, and between Finite […] Infinite, there is no proportion: the faculty is bounded, but the Object is boundless. Psal 147.5. Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite. How then should this eggshell comprehend the Ocean? 2. BECAUSE if he were comprehensible by our knowledge, than our knowledge of him would be equal to his own knowledge of himself. Divine knowledge is adequate to the Divine Essence: the Nature of God is the proportionable Object of his Understanding, he knows not any thing above or below himself. If therefore we could know him essentially, our weak and finite understanding would be equal to his Divine, Infinite and Supreme knowledge: for the perfection of his Understanding, is to know himself, i. e. the latitude and glory of his own being. But, Oh! the vast distance that the Creature stands at from God! Shall the upstarts of time, equal themselves in Understanding with Eternity it self? Shall they that are of Yesterday, and know nothing, compare with him that is from Everlasting? Shall our purblind eyes challenge as much as he, who is light it self? 3. BECAUSE he is without Causes Humane knowledge comes to discern into things, by reaching the Causes of them, and in that way it pries into the Nature or Essence of them. He that apprehends the first being, is able to say what he is, to trace his Original, to give a true and proper definition of him, to find out and discover the Nature of his essential & constituting principles; but this no Creature can do;