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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 22 (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.
SERMON XXII.
2. THE next of the Divine Virtues to be considered of, is Power; of which take this Description: It is God able to do whatsoever he doth or can Will. For our right taking up the notion of this Attribute, let these things be considered, 1. THAT Power considered in the most general & comprehensive sense of it, is nothing else but God's All-sufficiency; and hath been already considered, in the fust general Head, to which the Knowledge of God in his Back parts is referred; and so it comprehends all the Attributes under it, as being in our conception, a Genus both to his Essence & Subsistence; and so the word Power is used in Scripture sometimes, for God's sufficiency; so, Gen 17.1— I am the Almighty God—. This, in our mode & method of expressing things, is the prima potentia of God, antecedent, and leading to our consideration of his Knowledge & Will. 2. THERE is an executive Power which we ascribe unto God, or a Power of Operation, which discovers it self in his works of Efficiency; and therefore the Doctrine of it properly belongs to that Head in general; for when we see what God hath done, we are thereby led to conclude his Omnipotency; and this is consequent upon, and flows from his All-sufficiency; and is one of the Perfections in which it is manifested. Of this Power mention is made, Psal. 115.3. and we conceive of it in this order: We first look upon God as able, (Eph. 3.20.) that is his All-sufficiency; then by his Wisdom & Will determining what to do, (Eph. 1.11.) and then powerfully to effect or bring about, what he hath so propounded; Psal. 13.5, 6. Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places. 3. THAT this executive Omnipotency of God, is nothing else but his effective Will: for the Will of God, as it is an effective Principle, or efficient Cause of things, hath the consideration of an unresistible Omnipotency in it; see