N02384:943
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.
Thirdly, THE Author or Efficient of this Creation, and that in God: God Created the Heaven, and the Earth, Gen. 1.1. The Works of Creation are therefore ascribed to him, Isa 40.28.42.5. & 44.24. The Attribute of Crea•••, belongs to Him, and ••me else. Now on supposition that the World was Created, it a••o••rily follows that God Created it; and this will appear, both.
I. FROM the Consideration of the things proceed by Creature. And here consider, 1. THAT the Creature could not make is self. Thus •••se is something Antecedent to the Effect, and therefore cannot be the some with it; what […] a thing do towards its own Reing, when it in […]? The Efficient is Active, the Effect is Passive: If the Creature were its own Maker, it should be before it is. 2. THERE is no Being either before or beside the Creature, but God. The first and highest distribution that we can find of Being, is into God and the Creature; and there is nothing but what belongs to one of these. If then the Creature could not make it self, God must; if it must have a Maker that was before it, it must be He. The Creature began with Time, what is before that is Eternal, and that is no other had God. 3. THE Nature of the Creation saith, that it could have to other Maker but God. If we look into the things themselves, and view the Frame of the Would, and take notice of the curious and exquisite manner of the Make of it; the exact Harmony and Symmetry of the whole, and the curious Contrivances in each part; (in which the least Fly is full of wonders;) it will discover Infinite Wisdom, and Eternal Power to have been at Work about it: which are plain Demonstrations that God's Hand alone formed and brought it forth; all the Beings that are in the Would carry in them the witnesses who it was that made them; Rom. 1.20. The Invisible things of Him, from the Creation of the world, are early se, &c.