Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of 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.^* God knows all things from Eternity, and therefore perpetually knows them; the reason is because the Divine Knowledge is infinite^* and therefore ⟨p. 213⟩comprehends all knowable Truths at once. An eternal Knowledge comprehends in it self all Time, and beholds past and present in the same manner, and therefore his Knowledge is immutable: By one simple Knowledge he considers the infinite spaces of past and future.

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 imagin 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 stedfast, suffers no change, beholds all their motions at once and by one glance.