Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

3. Nor can it be for want of strength. Who hath power to control him? Not all the combined devices and endeavours of men can make the Counsel of God to totter, Prov. 19.21. There are many devices in a mans heart, nevertheless the Counsel of the Lord, that shall stand; that, and that only shall stand: Man hath a power to devise and imagine, but no power to effect and execute of himself. God wants no more Power to effect what he will, than he wants Understanding to know what is fit.

3. Nor can it be for want of strength. Who hath power to controul him? Not all the combin'd devices and endeavours of men can make the Counsel of God to totter, Prov. 19.21. There are many devices in a mans heart, nevertheless the Counsel of the Lord, that shall stand; that, and that only shall stand: Man hath a power to devise and imagin, but no power to effect and execute of himself. God wants no more Power to effect what he will, than he wants Understanding to know what is fit.

Well then, since God wanted not Wisdom to frame his Decrees, nor Holiness to regulate them, nor Power to effect them; what should make him change them? Since there can be no reason superior to His; no event unforeseen by him; no Holiness comparable to His; no Unrighteousness found in Him; no Power equal to His to put a rub in his way.

4. Though the Will of God be immutable, yet it is not to be understood so, as that the things themselves so willed, are immutable; Nor will the immutability of the things willed by him, follow upon the unchangeableness of his Will in willing them; though God be firm in willing them, yet he doth not will that they should alway be. God did not perpetually will the doing those things which he once decreed to be done: He decreed that Christ should suffer, but he did not decree that Christ should alway suffer; so he willed the Mosaical Rites for a time, but he did not will that they should alway continue; He willed that they should endure only for a time, and when the time came for their ceasing, God had been mutable if he had not put an end to them, because his Will had fixed such a Period: So that the changing of those things which he had once appointed to be practised, is so far from charging God with changeableness, that God would be mutable if he did not take them away, since he decreed as well their abolition at such a time, as their continuance till such a time; so that the removal of them was pursuant to his unchangeable Will and Decree. If God had decreed that such Laws should alway continue, and afterwards