Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

3. Gods knowledge and Will is the cause of all things and their successions. ^*There can be no pretence of any changeableness of knowledge in God, but in this case, before things come to pass, he knows that they will come to pass; after they are come to pass, he knows that they are past and slide away. This would be something if the succession of things were the cause of the divine Knowledge, as it is of our knowledge; but on the contrary, the divine Knowledge and Will is the cause of the succession of them: God doth not know Creatures because they are, but they are because he knows them. All his works were known to him from the beginning of the world. ^*All his works were not known to him, if the events of all those works were not also known to him; If they were not known to him how should he make them? he could not do any thing ignorantly: He made them then after he knew them, and did not know them after he made them: His Knowledge of them made a change in them, their existence made no change in his Knowledge: He knew them when they were to be Created, in the same manner that he knew them after they were Created; before they were brought into act, as well as after they were brought into act; before they were made, they were, and were not; they were in the Knowledge of God, when they were not in their own nature: God did not receive his knowledge from their existence, but his Knowledge and Will acted upon them to bring them into being.

3. Gods knowledge and Will is the cause of all things and their successions. ^*There can be no pretence of any changeableness of knowledge in God, but in this case, before things come to pass, he knows that they will come to pass; after they are come to pass, he knows that they are past and slide away. This would be something if the succession of things were the cause of the divine Knowledg, as it is of our knowledge; but on the contrary, the divine Knowledge and Will is the cause of the succession of them: God doth not know Creatures because they are, but they are because he knows them. All his works were known to him from the beginnig of the world. ^*