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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.
NOW this Ubiquity or Omnipresence of God, is wont to be expressed by Divines, according to the Scriptures in these particulars. 1. THAT he is […] where excluded, but wholly within, and together with every place; so that there is no place where he is not. The light of Nature discovers this, and therefore the P••t could say, J•vis omnia plena. He is nearer to, and more intimate with us, than we are with ourselves. Acts 17.27. That they should seek after the Lord, if h••ly they might feel after him, and find him, though h• be not far from every one of us. And for this reason he knows us better than we […]. 1 Joh. 3.2•. •pan•. G•d is greater than •ur ears, and kn•••th all things. He is not partly in Heaven, and partly in Earth, as some, but his whole enti•e Essence influenceth all places; and tho' he shows more of his glory in Heaven, yet he is no more there essentially, than he is on Earth, and in Hell. 2. THAT he is no where included or shut up; for because he contains all place in him, and is placed no where, but is present every where without relation to place, as his Subject; therefore no place can possibly include him Acts 17.24. God that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven & earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. If there were ten thousand worlds, he would be entirely present with them all. 3 THAT he is altogether without any motion, or local mutation: because of his Infinite presence, his essence is not placed more in heaven, than here below; nor doth he leave one place to go to another; but tho' he be every where, yet he rests unmovable forever: so that when the Scripture speaks of his rending the heaven, and coming down; of his looking from heaven the habitation of his holiness, of his riding upon a Cherub and the wings of the wind, and such like expressions; they are modes of Speech accommodated to our conceptions, and are to be interpreted of his special manifestations of himself in the works of Providence. 4. THAT he is present every where, without filling of any place: for if he be without quantity, and dimensions, and have no body, he doth not then fill up any place, i. e. his being there doth not exclude the Creature; two created beings cannot occupy the same place in the same instant, but one must give way to the other: