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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 27 (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.
A Faculty without an Object is miserable, and it will be a great part of the infelicity of the damned, that their Faculties shall be destitute of all convenient Objects for them to act upon. But here in this life God gives to Sinners such Objects as their outward man is delighted in, and they take much content in the enjoyment and use of them: he gives them food to live upon, and such as their Palates relish, and in due season; he affords them raiment to wear, to cover their nakedness, and defend them from the injuries of every season; he is their great provider, the whole World is his Family, and what he gives, they have; Psal. 104.27, 28. He spreads their Table, sills their Cup, gives them Houses to live in Estates to live upon, makes every Creature to pay them its service; they have their Wives and Children and Friends to solace themselves withal; gives them Callings to attend, and pr•spe•• these Callings; keeps their Houses and Ships and Warehouses from burning; their Ships from miscarrying, &c. 5. THE Fruition which they have of the good and comfort of all these good things: That their Faculties meet with their Objects, and take satisfaction in them; that they can suck out the sweetness of them, and take pleasure in them. God could either shut up the virtue of these things in them, that they should not exert it; (there is bread, and there is the staff of bread;) or he could impede the Faculty, that it should not act upon its Object with delight. Give Meat and no stomach, and digestment or nutriment; Clothes and no warmth; give Men abundance, and deny them a heart to make use of it, making themselves miserable in the midst of plenty. That he gives them both the things to rejoice in, and enables them to joy and delight in them, is his great Benignity, Psal. 65.8 Eccl. 2.24. There is nothing better for a man, than that be should eat & drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the band of God. (3.) THE manner of God's bestowing these good things upon Sinners: He doth it bountifully. God's Essential Goodness appears in his communicative bounty. He had been Good in himself, yea Goodness it self, if he had never willed any of his good things to the Creature; but we had not known him to be so, had he not in his Efficiency revealed himself to us in his Benignity.