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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. THE extreme folly of all Hypocrites. They take a great deal of pains to dress up duties with a very fair out-side, and give much attendance to the several performances of Religion, who read, hear, & make long prayers, keep Fasts frequently, and give many Alms but all these Sacrifices are without an heart, they have no spirit in them; God finds dead mens bones, rottenness & stench under all this paint and varnish, and it is unsavoury to him. Isai. 66.2, 3. To this man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word. He that killeth an ox, is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck, &c. See, Psal. 51.17. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken & a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
1. THE extream folly of all Hypocrites. They take a great deal of pains to dress up duties with a very fair out-side, and give much attendance to the several performances of Religion, who read, hear, & make long prayers, keep Fasts frequently, and give many Alms but all these Sacrifices are without an heart, they have no spirit in them; God finds dead mens bones, rottenness & stench under all this paint and varnish, and it is unsavoury to him. Isai. 66.2, 3. To this man will I look, even to him that is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and t•embleth at my word. He that killeth an ox, is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck, &c. See, Psal. 51.17. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken & a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
2 THE extreme danger of formal Worship. Whatever else may be said to the unlawfulness of imposing upon men stinted forms of prayer and public service to God, because indeed it is not to God, but against him; there is this one thing that would persuade a serious Christian that desires to hold Communion with God in all his sacred duties, to be afraid of it, viz. That of its own Nature it hazards his being formal in it, and the reducing him to a spiritless frame in his attendance upon it and thereby, instead of pleasing God, to provoke him to anger against him, and serving him in vain: a man may be heartless and perfunctory in the other, but in this way he can hardly be otherwise.