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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.
4. HENCE God's Holiness is above all degrees, whereas that of the Creature is gradual. God is full, perfect, can receive no addition or increase, it is impossible that he should be more holy than he is; but second beings are capable of more, at least they are contained in bounds and gradations. Put all the Holiness together, that is in all Angels, Saints, the third Heaven, and all will not make up such an one as is in God, they are none of them pure in his sight. Tho' Angelical Holiness be sinless, yet I know not why it may not be growing; if they increase in knowledge, they may in love.
4. HENCE God's Holiness is above all degrees, whereas that of the Creature is gradual. God is full, perfect, can receive no addition or encrease, it is impossible that he should be more holy than he is; but second beings are capable of more, at least they are contained in bounds and gradations. Put all the Holiness together, that is in all Angels, Saints, the third Heaven, and all will not make up such an one as is in God, they are none of them pure in his sight. Tho' Angelical Holiness be sinless, yet I know not why it may not be growing; if they encrease in knowledge, they may in love.
[3.] WHEREIN the displays of this Attribute are more especially to be observed?
Answ. IT is certain that Holiness runs through' all God's Works: Psal. 145.17. The Lord is —holy in all his works. But there are some particulars in which it more eminently beans out to us: there are dark Providences that puzzle the godly, and are the bane of wicked men, the Holiness whereof God will one day vindicate, to the confusion of those ungodly ones who thought him to be altogether like them: but there are other things on which his Holiness is imprinted in Capital Letters which may be reduced to four heads, 1. GOD's Holiness appears in the Image which be stamped upon Reasonable Creatures, and the law which be gave them. I put them together, because in the one they were suited for, in the other they were appointed to their end: when God would make a Creature like himself, and would grave his own Image upon it, he made it holy;