N02384:416
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.
(2.) THAT our Words are not capable of uttering his being, or declaring his Name. Names are the signs of things; and the imposition of Names supposeth him, that gives them, to know there Natures. Adam knew the Natures of the Creatures, and accordingly he put Names upon them, and the proper end of Names is, that the thing signified by a Name, may by it be understood, but no man can give such a Name unto God, as can s•••ificantly express his Nature; neither indeed ca• we say any thing concerning him, as he is. Whatever title was put upon God, or whatsoever we assert concerning him, it is all improper, because the first being is ineffable. Prov. 30.4. What is his name? and what is his sons name, if thou canst •ell? This appears, 1. BECAUSE […] men can frame in his mind a proper conception of God. Names are the representation of the Conception, which the Understanding hath of things; and therefore of that thing, of which we can conceive nothing proper in our minds, we never can express any thing properly. The conception may outbid the expression; but this can never go beyond that. Impossible it is for our ignorance to speak of God with such words as can demonstrate his being properly. 2. BECAUSE God cannot reveal and make known to the Creature his innate perfection, so […] to make it to Understand what he is in himself; and hence to be able to Name him properly. God cannot make a Creature of such a Capacity as to know him in the latitude of his being; and hence flows the impossibility for a man, or any other second being, to put an adequate Name upon him. That God cannot thus do, is not by reason of any imperfection in him, but because of his great perfection. For, [1] IF God should reveal himself to any second being fully, and make his name perfectly known, it must be to a Creature that is able to receive this revelation, and apprehend what he declares concerning himself: but there cannot be a Creature capable of this; it is inconsistent with a Created Nature: to fit a second being for this, God must make such another as himself not only in his Image and likeness, but equality; Infinitely wise, Eternally knowing, which would imply a contradiction: for he should not make a Creature, but a God. [2] IF he should reveal himself fully to the Creature, it must be either in one word and moment, or in a speech and space of time: