N02384:566
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 20 (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.
2. He is God without any possibility of Change: He not only actually changeth not; but it is impossible that he should. It may in a sense be said of the third Heavens, that they do not actually change, tho' they have changed, and have a succession, yet being constant natures, they are the same they were in the first moment of their Creation, essentially; yet there is a passive power in them, they may receive impressions from his hand who made them: but there is no such thing in God, Psal. 102.27. Thou art the same.— This Attribute is fully asserted, Jam. 1.17. — The Father of lights, with wh•m there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. There are two expressions used to illustrate it: no variation, the word is used to express the Sun's variation or change of place, every day, in passing through' the Signs in the Zodiac; God is called a Sun in Psal. 84.11. But he keeps the same place, never varies: and no shadow of turning; the first lines of a Picture are called it's shadow, by shadows we understand the least appearance or rude draught of such a thing: the word turning also alludes to the Sun, and either points at his turning about every day, passing out of one Hemisphere into another, and so constantly rolling about the earth; or to his Summer and Winter Tropics; it is sometimes going to one, and then back again to the other: the Father of lights hath no such turning, nor so much as a resemblance of it, but is steadfastly immutable.
2. He is God without any possibility of Change: He not only actually changeth not; but it is impossible that he should. It may in a sense be said of the third Heavens, that they do not actually change, tho' they have changed, and have a succession, yet being constant natures, they are the same they were in the first moment of their Creation, essentially; yet there is a passive power in them, they may receive impressions from his hand who made them: but there is no such thing in God, Psal. 102.27. Thou art the same.— This Attribute is fully asserted, Jam. 1.17