N02384:695
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.
[1.] IN general, in the Description consider these things, 1. THE subject in which this Attribute exalts its declarative glory, viz. sinful Men, and that universally. Sin is the common disease of Mankind, the whole race is fallen into it; (Rom. 5.12) there is not so much as one exempted; Rom. 3.12. They are all gone out of the […] —.And this is the Emphasis and Eminency of this Attribute, that it […] chosen such a subject to be its foil in which to make it self known: and there are these considerations that make it admirable, 1. BY Sin they had forfeited […] to any Goodness, and could expect nothing at God's hands, but that his revenging Justice should fall upon them, and out them off; they were under the Curse of Death, which contains in it a loss of all good, and a suffering of every evil, and it belonged to them, Dax. 9.8. 2. BY Sin they had provoked God to do execution upon them; they had made themselves his enemies; and such is the state of Men by Nature described to be, Rom. 5.10.—When we were enemies—.And therefore had all reason to expect the utmost of his Wrath to fall upon them; for if a Man find his Enemy, will he not stay him? 3. BY Sin they had made themselves unprofitable, and could therefore have no ground in themselves to expect such a favour; Rom. 3 12.—They are altogether become unprofitable—.They had wholly lost their strength of serving God, or doing any thing to his Glory, become vain and useless, as to active Obedience; and why should God trouble himself with such an useless burden? and all this bespeaks that it is mere Mercy that any favour at all is shown to these Creatures. 2. THE particular thing which this Attribute employs it self upon, in this subject, viz. their Misery. God looks upon their miserable condition, and he moves his own bowels in compassion to them: Misery is the proper foil of Mercy, it can have no other Object. This Virtue was eminently in God from Eternity, but it could make […] discoveries of it self to the Creation, till the Creatures infelicity provided it a subject to work upon: all Creatures may partake in God's general Goodness, but this particular expression of it in Mercy, always supposeth the ⟨p. 82⟩