N02384:687
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 26 (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 XXVI.
(2.) GOD's Goodness is also considerable, as it discovers it self to fallen Men in ••ti••r. We have heard, That tho' all taste of his Goodness, yet some more than others; and there are some peculiar remarks to be made of it in relation to the Children of Men; and this Goodness is twofold, either that which is common to all, or that which is special & peculiar to some.
First, THERE is a Goodness of God which is common to all sorts of Men, and is therefore called common, because it is dispensed to good and bad, to friends & enemies: and yet it hath a specialty in it, respecting them, from the general Goodness in which the whole Creation is interested, and hath a peculiar Consideration on it, as it hath fallen on sinful Man for it's subject; and is therefore in a more restrained sense called the Mercy of God: Mercy sometimes in Scripture comprehends both of these, but elsewhere it intends the former, viz The benignity of God, which all fallen Men are sharers in: The proper head to which this belongs is Efficiency, where it discovers it self, and belongs there to the Day of Punishment, referring to the Moderation which God at present useth in the execution of it: but being one branch of his Goodness, may here be discoursed, and may thus be described: