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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 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.
NOW whatsoever is in God, is God, and hence he is all Essence: yet for our more distinct apprehensions of him; we may consider him, either as to his being, or his faculties, and take notice how he is unchangeable in each of them.
NOW whatsoever is in God, is God, and hence he is all Essence: yet for our more distinct apprehensions of him; we may consider him, either as to his being, or his faculties, and take notice how he is unchangable in each of them.
1. IN his Being or Essence be is Immutable: In his being he is God, and thence he argues his own Unchangeableness, Mal. 3.6. I am the Lord, I change not. To be God, and to be changeable is a contradiction: If the being of God were capable of a Change, it must be either, from not being to being, and then there must have been a time when he was not, which his Eternity contradicts, and is inconsistent with his absal••• being: or from being to not being, by […] of annihilation, which cannot stand with […] Eternity, which is as much without end as beginning; and must also be supposed to be either from himself, or from some other Agent; not from himself, because he wills his own being & glory, not from another, for it must be a more powerful than he; whereas all second beings are to him nothing and less than nothing and vanity; or from this sort of being to anoth••, which is equally impossible; for it must be either to a ⟨p. 63⟩more perfect being, and that he cannot, because his being is absolutely perfect, it compriseth all sorts of perfections most perfectly & eminently in it; or to a more imperfect, and then he would cease to be God, for to be God, and to be imperfect, is a contradiction: or by some alteration in some properties, or qualities, which also cannot be, by reason of his simplicity, for being without any composition, there can be no potentiality in him of being other than he is: Change in the Essence of a thing implies a passive power; but it is contrary to Divine simplicity to have such a power: His name, I am what I am, clearly teacheth his Immutability; all Essential Changes are reduced to the heads, either of Creation & Annihilation, or Generation and Corruption, or Augmentation & Diminution, or Alteration of Qualities: and because none of these do or can touch the first being, he must therefore needs be essentially Unchangeable.