Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

1. They may perish, say some; they have it not from themselves that they do not perish, but from thee, who didst endue them with an incorruptible nature; They shall perish if thou speakest the word; Thou canst with as much ease destroy them as thou didst create them: But the Psalmist speaks not of their possibility, but the certainty of their perishing.

2. They shall perish in their qualities and motion, not in their substance, say others: They shall cease from that motion which is designed properly for the generation and corruption of things in the Earth; but in regard of their substance and beauty they shall remain: As when the strings or Wheels of a Clock or Watch are taken off, the material parts remain; though the motion of it, and the use for discovering the time of the day ceaseth.^* To perish, doth not signify alway a falling into nothing, an annihilation, by which both the matter and the form are destroyed; but a ceasing of the present appearance of them; a ceasing to be what they now are, as a man is said to perish when he dies, whereas the better part of man doth not cease to be: The figure of the Body moulders away, and the matter of it returns to Dust; but the Soul being immortal ceaseth not to act, when the Body by reason of the absence of the Soul is uncapable of acting. So the Heavens shall perish; the appearance they now have shall vanish, and a more glorious and incorruptible frame be erected by the power and goodness of God. The dissolution of Heaven and Earth is meant by the word [perish]; the raising a new frame is signified by the word ⟨p. 205⟩[changed]; as if the Spirit of God would prevent any wrong meaning of the word [perish] by alleviating the sense of that, by another which signifies only a mutation and change; as when we change a Habit and Garment, we quit the old to receive the new.

2. They shall perish in their qualities and motion, not in their substance, say others: They shall cease from that motion which is designed properly for the generation and corruption of things in the Earth; but in regard of their substance and beauty they shall remain: As when the strings or Wheels of a Clock or Watch are taken off, the material parts remain; though the motion of it, and the use for discovering the time of the day ceaseth.