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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 23 (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.] OF Holiness take this Description; It is God bound for himself & his own glory, as his last End. Holiness in the largest sense may serve to set God forth absolutely Perfect, in his Being; and so it comprehends all the Attributes under it: but looking on it as a distinct Perfection, and so it respects the Divine Purity. God's Holiness may be considered, either, as it is Essential, and so it is his spotless Glory; hence said to be Glorious in Holiness, Exod. 15.11. Or, as it is relative to his Works of Efficiency, and therein it appears to us according to the Description given. There are two things to which Holiness is opposed in Scripture, which will give some light to the knowledge of it: 1. TO things that are unclean Hence the Prophet when he had a glimpse of this Perfection, presently cries out of his own, and his People's Uncleanness, Isa. 6.3.5. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory. Then said I, Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. The Priests ⟨p. 72⟩were forbidden to touch any unclean thing, because they were holy: this in a moral sense tells us that Sin and Holiness are directly opposite. God's Holiness is negatively his Being altogether without Sin. Now the most comprehensive Nation of Sin in a Creature, is that it carries him to some other end than God and his Glory; that is its impurity. 2. TO things that are common. Things were therefore made holy by Consecration, which was done by a separating of them from common, and dedicating them to Divine Use. On this account the Tabernacle, Temple, and all their Utensils, Priests. Levites; yea, and the people of Israel were made holy, and so called, because they were made God's peculiar; hence that title, 1 Pet. 2.9.—An holy nation.— So that the more solemnly any Person or thing were devoted to God, and the farther separate they were from any other end or use, the more holy they were accounted: hence we have some glimpse of the Holiness of God; and in the Description observe two things, 1. IT is God bound for himself, and his own Glory. He hath as it were separated himself from all inferior ends, and devoted himself to employ himself for his own glory;