An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches

§. 16. If it be said, That then God should know nothing till it is, because a denomination must be from something, and nothing can be no Object or terminus; and so of his Will. I Ans. 1. God doth not know any thing as existent now, which doth not exist now. But our Now is in his Eternity, and his Eternity without partition comprehendeth all our Times; prae and post, ab and ad are Prepositions of no signification in and of Eternity; but only [In]. And therefore as Augustine saith, his Prescience is but his Science so denominated from the Order of Objects, but noteth not any difference in him, who hath neither prae nor post. How this is to be understood without making the Creature eternally exist, I have elsewhere fully opened.

§. 17. That plain truth therefore which must here satisfy us is, That God, who is the first efficient and ultimate final Cause of all things, and caused by none, did of his free abundant Mercy undertake the saving of sinful Man, and notwithstanding his Threatening and Man's Defect, resolving to make advantage of our Sin and Misery, for the Glory of his Wisdom, Love, Mercy and Justice, he promised that the Eternal Word should in due time assume Man's nature, and therein ⟨p. 95⟩do and suffer that which should glorify him more than Man's Perdition would have done, and which should make it just and meet for him to save the Guilty, both inceptively at the present under the Promise (for 4000 years) and afterward more fully at Christ's Incarnation, and finally to perfect all in Glory.

§. 17. That plain truth therefore which must here satisfie us is, That God, who is the first efficient and ultimate final Cause of all things, and caused by none, did of his free abundant Mercy undertake the saving of sinful Man, and notwithstanding his Threatning and Man's Defect, resolving to make advantage of our Sin and Misery, for the Glory of his Wisdom, Love, Mercy and Justice, he promised that the Eternal Word should in due time assume Man's nature, and therein ⟨p. 95⟩do and suffer that which should glorifie him more than Man's Perdition would have done, and which should make it just and meet for him to save the Guilty, both inceptively at the present under the Promise (for 4000 years) and afterward more fully at Christ's Incarnation, and finally to perfect all in Glory.