Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

The first part is the Petition pleaded; the second part is the Petition answered in an assurance, that there should in time be a full deliverance.^* The design of the Pen-man, is to confirm the Church in the truth of the Divine Promises; that though the foundations of the World should be ripped up, and the Heavens clatter together, and the whole Fabric of them be unpinned and fall to pieces, the firmest parts of it dissolved; yet the Church should continue in its stability, because it stands not upon the changeableness of Creatures, but is built upon the immutable Rock of the truth God, which is as little subject to change as his Essence:

The first part is the Petition pleaded; the second part is the Petition answered in an assurance, that there should in time be a full deliverance.^* The design of the Pen-man, is to confirm the Church in the truth of the Divine Promises; that though the foundations of the World should be ript up, and the Heavens clatter together, and the whole Fabrick of them be unpinn'd and fall to pieces, the firmest parts of it dissolved; yet the Church should continue in its stability, because it stands not upon the changeableness of Creatures, but is built upon the immutable Rock of the truth God, which is as little subject to change as his Essence:

1. *Pareus.

They shall perish, thou shalt change them. As he had before ascribed to God the foundation of Heaven and Earth^*, so he ascribes to God here the destruction of them: Both the beginning and end of the World are here ascertained. There is nothing indeed from the present appearance of things that can demonstrate the cessation of the world; The Heaven and Earth stand firm; the motions of the heavenly Bodies are the same, their beauty is not decayed: Individuals corrupt, but the Species and Kinds remain: The Successions of the Year observe their due order; but the Sin of Man renders the change of the present appearance of the world necessary, to accomplish the design of God for the glory of his Elect. The Heavens do not naturally perish, as some fancied an old age of the world, wherein it must necessarily decay as the Bodies of Animals do; or that the parts of the Heavens are broken off by their rubbing one against another in their motion, and falling to the Earth, are the Seeds of those things that grow among us.