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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 25 (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. IT was Goodness that made, of gave, being to the Creature. The second being is the proper issue and product of Goodness as well as Power. Goodness is accounted to be one of the prime affections of being; merely to be, is in Nature better than not to be, now the Creature had it being from God, Acts 17.28. it once was not. and had never had been, if his Fiat had not given Entity to it.
1. IT was Goodness that made, of gave, being to the Creature. The second being is the proper issue and product of Goodness as well as Power. Goodness is accounted to be one of the prime affections of being; meerly to be, is in Nature better than not to be, now the Creature had it being from God, Acts 17.28. it once was not. and had never had been, if his Fiat had not given Entity to it.
2. THAT he made it for an end which it was to serve unto. Philosophy tells us, that the end and goodness of a thing are convertible; a thing had as good not to be, as to be to no, use on purpose: and the goodness of a thing is proportionable to the end it serveth to: that therefore God made the Creature for an end, and no less than his own Glory, as, Prov. 16.4. The Lord hath made all things for himself (Rev. 4.11.) sets forth his great Goodness to it.
3. THAT he put into the Creature a fitness or Capacity, of serving to their end, in their place. To have made a thing for an end: which it could never have attained, had been to make it in vain. The habitual goodness of any thing, is its usefulness to the purpose it is designed for; and so far as it is useful, so far it is good. Now this was the goodness which God saw in all his works, and they had it from him; his Wisdom contrived, and his Power effected it, and the effect it self is his Goodness. There is no Creature but hath its use.