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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 16 (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.
1. THAT there is a First Being. This is necessary, for it is impossible, that all things should succeed & follow one after another. Where there is a succession, there must be a beginning; where there is a second & third, there was a first, from which, they are so denominated. All Beings cannot be originated, and therefore there must be an Original. We must firmly believe this Principle, as the bottom of our Faith; for faith runs up to the highest, and resolves it self there. Faith can never trade for life, with th•se that have borrowed their own being & life from another; ⟨p. 50⟩but it goes to the Sun for light. (Psal. 84.11.) It depends upon the Fountain. Jer. 2.13.
2. GOD is this First Being. It is to such a Being, and no other, that we acknowledge a Deity; and when we say he is the First, two things are intended.
(1.) THAT no other Being is before him, or Co-•val with him: but that he is before all other Beings. It he be the first, then there is no other that can anticipate his being: He acknowledgeth none elder than himself. Isai. •3.10. Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have ••sen: that ye may know & believe me, and understand that I am •e: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. Nay there was none with him, or his Contemporary; for then he could not be the first. He that is first, goes before all other. When no other thing had any existence, when there was none but he, then he was.