[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; (Boston in New-England: :: Printed by B. Green and S. Kneeland for B. Eliot and D. Henchman, and sold at their shops: 1726)]

The Reverend Samuel Willard (1640–1707), born the thirty-first of January, 1640, at Concord in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was the sixth son of Major Simon Willard, a godly founder of that settlement, and Mary Sharpe, his pious consort, both of English extraction. Educated at Harvard College, where he attained his degree of Master of Arts in the year of our Lord 1659, Willard was from his youth inclined to the study of Divinity, esteeming the knowledge of Christ and the service of His Church above all earthly honors. Ordained to the sacred ministry at Groton in 1664, he did faithfully labor among that frontier people until, in God’s providence, the devastations of King Philip’s War compelled his removal. Thereafter, in 1678, he was called by the Third Church in Boston to be their teaching elder, where, upon the decease of Rev. Thomas Thacher, he became sole pastor and a light to many eminent families of the colony. In all things, Willard was a zealous defender of Reformed orthodoxy, steadfast in the covenantal theology of the Puritans, yet prudent and discerning, as notably manifested in his charitable skepticism during the lamentable witchcraft delusions of 1692. His labors extended to the academy, for from 1701 until his death in 1707, he served as acting President of Harvard College, laboring to preserve sound doctrine in the instruction of youth. His chief literary legacy, A Compleat Body of Divinity (1726), remains a monument of New England scholasticism, wherein the truths of Scripture are methodically set forth. Samuel Willard, thrice a husband and always a faithful shepherd, entered into his eternal rest in Cambridge, leaving a legacy of piety, prudence, and learned zeal for the cause of Christ in the wilderness.

The Reverend Samuel Willard (1640–1707), born the thirty-first of January, 1640, at Concord in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was the sixth son of Major Simon Willard, a godly founder of that settlement, and Mary Sharpe, his pious consort, both of English extraction. Educated at Harvard College, where he attained his degree of Master of Arts in the year of our Lord 1659, Willard was from his youth inclined to the study of Divinity, esteeming the knowledge of Christ and the service of His Church above all earthly honors. Ordained to the sacred ministry at Groton in 1664, he did faithfully labor among that frontier people until, in God’s providence, the devastations of King Philip’s War compelled his removal. Thereafter, in 1678, he was called by the Third Church in Boston to be their teaching elder, where, upon the decease of Rev. Thomas Thacher, he became sole pastor and a light to many eminent families of the colony. In all things, Willard was a zealous defender of Reformed orthodoxy, steadfast in the covenantal theology of the Puritans, yet prudent and discerning, as notably manifested in his charitable skepticism during the lamentable witchcraft delusions of 1692. His labors extended to the academy, for from 1701 until his death in 1707, he served as acting President of Harvard College, laboring to preserve sound doctrine in the instruction of youth. His chief literary legacy, A Compleat Body of Divinity (1726), remains a monument of New England scholasticism, wherein the truths of Scripture are methodically set forth. Samuel Willard, thrice a husband and always a faithful shepherd, entered into his eternal rest in Cambridge, leaving a legacy of piety, prudence, and learned zeal for the cause of Christ in the wilderness.

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ARGUMENTS FOR THE NECESSITY OF PREDESTINATION

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Now, further to evince the necessity of such a Decree of Predestination, besides what was before intimated from the consideration of the infinite wisdom of God, which would never set him on work to do anything without a design what to do with it, we may further argue it:

I. Dependence on God’s Will

From the dependence, as of all second beings, so of man upon the will of God. If man be to be guided to his end by the divine will, there must then be such a will of God by which he guides him: and hence he must have designed in his own mind an end to which he will guide and lead him; which hath been before proved in the consideration of special government; and this must needs infer such a Predestinationas we assert.

II. Purpose of Inanimate Beings

Because without this Predestination of man, the whole frame of inanimate beings must be useless; at least they would in a great measure lose their end. We see all in this lower world is subordinated to the use and service of man (Isaiah 2:21-22); and if he be not ultimately made to bring glory to God, they would suffer vanity; as for the present they seem to do, and groan under it (Romans 8:19). If then God decreed to have his entire glory by the whole universe, he could not but design a special glory by man, else there would be a stop put to the aim of those subordinate media, which cannot be.

III. God’s Liberty and Dispose

Because man were not else at the liberty and dispose of God if he were not under a Decree of Predestination. If he were not at the dispose of God’s counsel, he were from under his power; but now, hereby man appears to be at the will of his Creator, when he is a subject of divine Predestination (Romans 9:19). Herein God appears to be a most sovereign Potter, to have power over the most noble and curious piece of clay in his own workmanship, to make of it a vessel of honour or dishonour according to his pleasure; and God will not lose his prerogative over his works.

IV. Infinite Foreknowledge

From the impossibility of God’s infinite foreknowledge not to have so determined concerning all second beings before the world was. The creature is a product of God’s counsel, and all its changes and contingencies flow as consequents upon the same counsel: now the Apostle tells us that foreknowledge and predestination are linked together (Romans 8:29). For if God foreknew all the events befalling the reasonable creature, he then predestinated them to them; for it is certain that when all things were nowhere but in the mind of God in the days of eternity, he could foreknow nothing of them but what was his determinate will and counsel concerning them. And this may suffice in general.