N02384:934
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 34 (Question 9)
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.
First, THE thing described is Creation. This Word is sometimes used in a more large sense, to express any Origination that is given to the thing, and is applied to any Efficient of things Natural or Artificial. But in the strict and Scriptural sense of the Word, it is restrained to a peculiar sense, and signifies, the giving to a thing it's whole and ••••re Being; end so it is differenced from all other Works, whether Natural or Artificial: In those there are New Forms introduced, into Matter that is fitted and disposed to receive them; but in Creation it is otherwise; for here the Matter is Made in order to the producing the Form: They do but bring a Form into an old Matter; but in this the thing is altogether New; the thing was Nothing before Creation gave it a Being. It is true there is a different manner of Creating some things and others; some had their whole Existence at first, others successively; but in both it was Creation Work that set the first stroke to them, before which they were nothing at all, as will afterwards appear.
First, THE thing described is Creation. This Word is sometimes used in a more large sense, to express any Origination that is given to the thing, and is applied to any Efficient of things Natural or Artificial. But in the strict and Scriptural sense of the Word, it is restrained to a peculiar sense, and fignifies, the giving to a thing it's whole and ••••re Being; end so it is differened from all other Works, whether Natural or Artificial: In those there are New Forms introduced, into Matter that is fitted and disposed to receive them; but in Creation it is otherwise; for here the Matter is Made in order to the producing the Form: They do but bring a Form into an old Matter; but in this the thing is altogether New; the thing was Nothing before Creation gave it a Being. It is true there is a different manner of Creating some things and others; some had their whole Existence at first, others successively; but in both it was Creation Work that set the first stroke to them, before which they were nothing at all, as will afterwards appear.
Secondly, THE thing asserted Creation is, there is such a Work. If there be a Creature, then a Creation. Either the World must be Eternal, or it must have a Beginning; Eternal it cannot be, for then we make it God, to whom Eternal belongs as an Attribute Incommunicable: If it had a Beginning it must needs be Created; a thing that once was not, and now is, had an Efficient; and if it receive from him it's whole Essence, it was then Created.