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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 17 (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. HERE is a Genus, analogically ascribed to God; He is called a SPIRIT: not that God and any Creature do really participate in one common Nature, so as to be properly reduced to one head of distribution. The Nature of GOD and the Nature of Angels are Infinitely different one from the other: but because he is the first being, he assumes to himself such a title for the help of our Understanding: hence He is called a Spirit, Job. 4.24. Which is the most excellent Being among all second Beings, and hath in it some of the nearest shadows and resemblances of the first Being. The word Spirit hath various acceptations in Scripture; among which it is concluded that the Glorious Angels are referred unto, when God is called a Spirit: who are so called. Psal. 104.4. Heb. 1.14. It will therefore help us to something of God, to consider some respects in which he is resembled by those Spirits.
1. SPIRITS are Invisible Substances, i. e. they cannot be seen by our bodily Eyes. Angels indeed have made themselves visible by assuming a body, or some grosser parts of the Elements in Figure of an Humane Body: so have they appeared to Abraham, to Lot, to Manoah, & many others. That a thing be made Visidium ⟨p. 53⟩through which it is seen, or the visive Spirits by the help whereof we discern things: but Angels are more fine and subtle Beings then either of th•se, and must therefore needs escape our sight, and be Invisible to us. Thus is God an Invisible Being; these bodily eyes of ours are not able to discern him: hence that Attribute, 1 Tim. 1.17. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible. He is therefore said to dwell in Secret (Mat. 6.6.) not only hath he never been seen, (