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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 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. God is a Spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth. The heart and spirit in man are the same thing in Scripture sense; and this is it that God requires, Prov. 23.26. My son, give me thine Heart. It is not all the specious & outside show of duty, that ⟨p. 55⟩he takes any content in at all, where the spirit is wanting; if the heart be gone somewhere else, all the rest is a burden to him; we see what estimate he makes of it, Ezek. 33.31. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, & they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And was not this the reason why he blows so upon their services, Isai. 1.11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of •e-•oats. Nor is it possible to cheat or put him off with any such trifling things, tho' never so modestly attended; for, being such a Spirit, he cannot but be intimately acquainted with our Spirits. He challengeth it as a Prerogative belonging to him, to try the Spirits, to search the hearts of men. This therefore shows us,
USE 3. HENCE learn that spiritual Service must needs be most acceptable to God. This is to pay him a service sutable to his nature, and must needs therefore be the most grateful to him; Christ himself draws this inference, Joh. 4.24. God is a Spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth. The heart and spirit in man are the same thing in Scripture sense; and this is it that God requires,