Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

1. God knows by his own Essence. He doth not know as we do, by habits, qualities, species, whereby we may be mistaken at one time and rectified at another: He hath not an Understanding distinct from his Essence as we have; but being the most simple Being, his Understanding is his Essence; and as from the infiniteness of his Essence we conclude the infiniteness of his Understanding, so from the unchangeableness of his Essence, we may justly conclude the unchangeableness of his Knowledge. Since therefore God is without all composition, and his Understanding is not distinct from his Essence; what he knows, he knows by his Essence; and there can then be no more mutability in his Knowledge, than there can be in his Essence; and if there were any in that, he could not be God, because he would have the property of a Creature: If his Understanding then be his Essence, his Knowledge is as necessary, as unchangeable as his Essence: As his Essence eminently contains all perfections in it self, so his Understanding comprehends all things past, present and future, in it self: If his Understanding and his Essence were not one and the same, he were not simple but compounded; if compounded, he would consist of parts; if he consisted of parts, he would not be an independent Being, and so would not be God.

2. God knows all things by one intuitive act. As there is no succession in his Being, so that he is one thing now and another thing hereafter; so there is no succession in his Knowledge: He knows things that are successive, before their existence and succession, by one single act of intuition; by one cast of his eye all things future are present to him in regard of his Eternity and Omnipresence: So that though there is a change and variation in the things known, yet his Knowledge of them and their several changes in nature, is invariable and unalterable. As imagine a Creature that could see with his eye at one glance the whole compass of the Heavens, by sending out beams from his eye without receiving any species from them, he would see the whole Heavens uniformly; this part now in the East, then in the West, without any change in his eye; for he sees every part and every motion together; and though that great Body varies and whirls about, and is in continual agitation; his eye remains steadfast, suffers no change, beholds all their motions at once and by one glance.