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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.
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. Tit. 3.4 But after that the kindness & love of God our Saviour toward man appeared. God manifested his perfections, as man had need of them; but they were in him really before, and that because he is eternally Unchangeable, never assumes any thing anew, but is the same for ever.
4. THE Divine Attributes are always in him in the highest degree, tho' in execution there is a different application. Extensively, as to Divine dispensations, in Providential Effects, God proceeds gradually in his dealings with men; as in dispensing Justice, he doth not at once give men the full of their deserts; and hence flows his Patience and Long suffering so in his dispensing of Mercy, whence there is a difference between Grace and Glory.