N02384:415
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.
and that because there is no Essence, nor Nature that (in propriety of speech) can be attributed to God: for Nature and Essence bespeak a thing arising out of some fore-going Principles; but there is no Principle of God, for there is nothing before him. Isai. 44.6. Thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer the Lord of hosts, I am the first, and I am the last, and besides me there is no God. 4. BECAUSE, being a simple Nature, there can be no judgment framed concerning him. Such is the Nature of an Humane judgment that it cannot judge of any thing but by framing and compounding some sentences concerning it: for Humane knowledge is nothing else, but the judgment of a necessary Axiom, and there is no axiom or sentence, that can be truly and properly formed concerning God: for in every sentence, there is an Antecedent and a Consequent, or a Subject and a Predicate, something going before, and something following after. Whereas in God, there is neither priority, nor posteriority; but whatsoever is in the Divine Essence, •s most properly the Divine Essence. 5. BECAUSE he is a most glorious & illustrious Object. Though it be, by the means of light, that we are capable of seeing a thing, yet a too bright and shining light puts out our eyes; and thus doth this great light, the eye of the mind. All Reason is too finite to comprehend the infinite; too shallow to contain the deep, the bottomless; too narrow to grasp the boundless; too little comprehensive to include this incomprehensible Object. God is a most eminently glorious Object; the shining brightness ••ar is in him, our sore eyes cannot be able to look upon. 1 Tim. 6.16. Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen. God therefore, not for want of good will to us, but in compassion to our frail and narrow capacities, will make no such discoveries of himself to us: He will for this reason put Moses into the cleft of the rock, and lay his hand upon him, whiles his glory passeth by him, Exod. 33. latter end.
and that because there is no Essence, nor Nature that (in propriety of speech) can be attributed to God: for Nature and Essence bespeak a thing arising out of some fore-going Principles; but there is no Principle of God, for there is nothing before him.