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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.
USE 2. HENCE how very unsuitable is it to represent the Divine Nature by any Corporeal similitude: I mean in Pictures or Images, of any visible & bodily substance, and that whether it be for civility or devotion, i. e. either merely as Ornamental, or as some pretend, to increase devout Affections in any; how is it possible rightly to shadow a Spirit? who ever was able rightly to decipher the form or shape of a being which is invisible! it is folly to pretend to afford us the Portraiture of an Angel, but it is a madness & wickedness to offer at any Image or Representation of God: How many solemn cautions did God give his people against this by Moses, besides the express forbidding of it in the second Command; and God declares it to be a thing Idolatrous. For any to entertain or fancy any other Image of God, but those reverend impressions of his glorious Perfections that are engraven upon his heart, is highly to dishonour him, and provoke him to Jealousy.
USE 2. HENCE how very unsutable is it to represent the Divine Nature by any Corporeal similitude: I mean in Pictures or Images, of any visible & bodily substance, and that whether it be for civility or devotion, i. e. either meerly as Ornamental, or as some pretend, to encrease devout Affections in any; how is it possible rightly to shadow a Spirit? who ever was able rightly to decypher the form or shape of a being which is invisible! it is folly to pretend to afford us the Portraicture of an Angel, but it is a madness & wickedness to offer at any Image or Representation of God: How many solemn cautions did God give his people against this by Moses, besides the express forbidding of it in the second Command; and God declares it to be a thing Idolatrous. For any to entertain or fancy any other Image of God, but those reverend impressions of his glorious Perfections that are engraven upon his heart, is highly to dishonour him, and provoke him to Jealousy.
USE 3. HENCE learn that spiritual Service must needs be most acceptable to God. This is to pay him a service suitable to his nature, and must needs therefore be the most grateful to him; Christ himself draws this inference, Joh. 4.24