Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

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.^*

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 beautie 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.^*

1. *verse 25.