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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 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.
(2.) THE Long-suffering of God, is God willing to defer the Sinners execution, till there be no remedy. Sentence is past upon the Sinner as soon as he is one. In civil Courts, it useth not to be long between Sentence, and Execution. On some God shows his severity in cutting them off speedily, and this is just; for they are under the Sentence, and stand at the Judges discretion; but to others he deals otherwise; and though they go up and down the world, under a Sentence of condemnation, yet are they forborne, and sometimes a very great while. Now the Long-suffering of God appears more especially in the gradation, or those many and slow steps which he takes in executing of his anger upon Sinners; he might do the work at once, but that he doth not, but proceeds gradually, speaks him a long-suffering God. Here then, observe these steps
(2.) THE Long-suffering of God, is God willing to deferr the Sinners execution, till there be no remedy. Sentence is past upon the Sinner as soon as he is one. In civil Courts, it useth not to be long between Sentence, and Execution. On some God shews his severity in cutting them off speedily, and this is just; for they are under the Sentence, and stand at the Judges discretion; but to others he deals otherwise; and though they go up and down the world, under a Sentence of condemnation, yet are they forborn, and sometimes a very great while. Now the Long-suffering of God appears more especially in the gradation, or those many and slow steps which he takes in executing of his anger upon Sinners; he might do the work at once, but that he doth not, but proceeds gradually, speaks him a long-suffering God. Here then, observe these steps
1. HE waits, and is not speedy in coming out against the Sinner. Eccl. 8.11. — Sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily—. He did not fall upon Adam immediately, but tarried till the cool of the day. Some he delays Ten, Twenty, Forty, an Hundred Years before he brings them to the Hell where they deserved to be the first moment of their being: