Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

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afterwards ⟨p. 216⟩changed that Decree, and resolved the abrogation of them; then indeed God had been mutable; He had rescinded one Decree by another; He had then seen an error in his first resolve, and there must be some weakness in the reason and wisdom whereon it was grounded:^* But it was not so here; for the change of those Laws is so far from slurring God with any mutability, that the very change of them is no other than the Issue of his eternal Decree; for from Eternity he purposed in himself to change this or that dispensation, though he did decree to bring such a dispensation into the world: The Decree it self was eternal and immutable, but the thing decreed was temporary and mutable. As a Decree from Eternity doth not make the thing decreed to be eternal; so neither doth the immutability of the Decree, render the thing so decreed to be immutable: As for Example, God decreed from all Eternity to create the World; the Eternity of this Decree did not make the world to be in being and actually created from Eternity; so God decreed immutably that the world so created should continue for such a time;