N02384:884
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 32 (Question 7)
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.
NOW in this Counsel, God contrives in his Mind an Eternal Idea of all things that are to be. God having a Work to do, in the Creation and Gubernation of the World; lays out the W••• Scheme of it in his Infinite Understanding, in which he hath a Pattern of the Whole World, and every thing in it: And this Idea must be Eternal, because Time, and all the Things of it are contrived in it, Acts 15.18. Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. And there is a vast Depth of Wisdom in it, Rom. 11.33. O the depth of the riches both of the wis••• and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways post finding out! There is a Double Knowledge we ascribe to God; a Knowledge of his All-sufficiency, by which he knows his own Power, and what he can do; and in this are comprised all Possible Beings: And a Knowledge of his Decree, which is called a Knowledge of Vision, in which he knows all Future Things; and this is in Scripture called his Fore-knowledge, Rom. 8.29. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son. And hitherto belongs this Idea, which is nothing else but a knowing of what he inte••• to do: For tho' in Men, the Things are the Idea, and their Knowledge is nothing else but the Image of the Things; yet in God his Knowledge ⟨p. 103⟩is the Idea and the Things are the Image: They are the first in his Mind before they are in themselves: N•• this Idea, is but One in God; at One Perfect and Eternal View, he clearly sees • Things that are to be, without any successive […]: They all stand before Him at once; For in seeing Himself he sees all Things: And put as it hath a diverse respect to the Creature, so it is manifold; so that the Idea or Rule of one Creature, is not the Idea of another; and for this reason it is called, The manifold wisdom of God, Eph. 3.10. It extends not only to the Kinds and Natures of Things, but to every Individual in each Kind, and every Action and Change that belongs to it: It counts every Drop of Rain, Hail, Snow that shall fall, where and when; Every Thought that comes into the Mind of every Creature; and there is not the most minute Thing that escapes it;