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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 18 (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.) WHAT it is to be Infinite? A. INFINITE is GOD of unlimited & unsearchable perfections. Such a Description is given of God, in regard to this Attribute of his. Psal. 145.3. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable. Here,
1. INFINITENESS is GOD: it is one of those perfections, which shine •ut in the Essence, ⟨p. 56⟩considering God as the most absolute first Being. New his Essence & Attributes are the same, only differenced in our Conceptions. It is therefore an In ••••aple perfection of God, it is his alone Prerogative to be Infinite. Some have thought the third Heaven to be so because it hath nothing to circumscribe it and hence to be in no place properly; but it is a great mistake, for it is limited by its own Essence, and so is a finite being: the World cannot be of an Infinite Magnitude; for then it would have no parts, nor measures: God therefore alone challengeth it as his Propriety, and a flower of his Diadem.
2. BY virtue of this Attribute, God is of unlimited and unsearchable Perfectives: or he is without all limits or bounds of his Essence: all created beings are bounded by their Essences; the form acting upon the matter, limits it within its own confines; but God is unconfined. There can be no searching him out to perfection, Job 11.7, &c. and this unlimitedness is applicable to all that can be said of him. Hence the Psalmist attributes it to his Understanding. (