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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 these Attributes are in God, but one most pure & simple act. They are therefore called Attributes, because they may more properly be said to be ascribed to him, than to be ⟨p. 51⟩really in him: for in him, who is the first Being, & void of composition & by consequence a most P••e act, there can be no division or proper distinction in his Being: And hence the Attributes do but convey to us what is to be known of God according to our manner & measure; and when we have said all of God that can be, we must look at a•l in him to be but One God, without division in Essence or Faculties. Hence,
2. ALL the Divine Attributes are to be conceived in God in the Abstract. as well as in the Concrete. Thus we do not only say, God is wise, but God is wisdom: He is Love, 1 Joh. 4.5. Light, 1 Joh. 1.5. and the reason is, because whatsoever is in God, is God himself; which follows from his being void of any composition; and otherwise there were in him succession & division; something in him which is not absolutely first; and so something that is not himself, which were a contradiction.
3. THE Divine Attributes are altogether in God, in the same Eternity, tho' they appear not so to us. He was in all his perfections, before the foundations of the World, in which Eternity there is no distinction of Priority or Posteriority. Joh 8. 58. Jesus said unto them, Verily verily I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Tho' some appear to us earlier, others later. Wisdom, Power and Goodness appeared in the Creation; Revenging Justice, not till the Fall; nor special Grace till afterwards.