[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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The Object: Man as a Possible Being

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The object of this Predestination is Man, considered as a possible being; or capable, in God’s all-sufficiency, of being whatsoever he pleaseth. It is needful that we rightly conceive in what respect Man came into this act of Predestination; and it must be in this and no other. For:

I. From Eternity

The object of the Decree is from eternity. There cannot be an act without an object; as we conceive of an act of Predestination, we must conclude there is something predestinated, and it must therefore be as ancient as the Decree in which it is.

II. In God

Hence the object of the Decree is in God. It must be sought for and found in him, and nowhere else; for there is no other eternal being but he; and so in the days of eternity, he could not see any being out of himself.

III. Before the Decree

The object of the Decree is that which in order goeth before the Decree: i.e., in only of the conception, and of the nature of things. We cannot make any sense of a decree about nothing; for that would be no decree; God must have something in his eye, or his infinite understanding, on which to determine his purpose.

IV. God’s All-Sufficiency

There is nothing goes before the Decree in any order but God’s all-sufficiency, on which the possibility of the creature is founded. If we employ contemplation in the consideration of things antecedently to the purpose of God, all we can say about them is that divine omnipotency was able to give a real being to them if he saw meet.

V. From Possible to Future

Hence the object of the Decree is that which by the Decree passeth from a mere possible to futurition. It was possible before, but now it is future. In the divine nature, we may conclude that it might be, but it is by the Decree that we may conclude that it shall be, for it is certain that all shall not be that might be. When God hath done all, he hath the residue of the spirit (Malachi 2:15). And hence Predestination doth not consider the existence of the creature by creation, as the Sublapsarians suppose, because creation comes within the compass of the Decree as a medium. Nor yet doth it suppose the prevision of the corrupt mass of mankind in the state of apostasy, which those also plead; for then God should have intended to make man before he had intended what to do with him; but this also was put in as another medium to the bringing about of the purpose.