Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

The Decree is immutable if the world perish at that time, and would not be immutable if the world did endure beyond that time that God hath fixed for the duration of it: As when a Prince orders a mans remaining in Prison for so many days; if he be prevailed with to give him a Delivery before those days, or to continue him in custody for the same Crime after those days, his Order is changed; But if he orders the delivery of him just at that time, till which he had before decreed that he should continue in Prison, the Purpose and Order of the Prince remains firm, and the change in the state of the Prisoner, is the fruit of that firm and fixed resolution: So that we must distinguish between the Person decreeing, the Decree it self, and the Thing decreed. The Person decreeing, viz. God is in himself immutable, and the Decree is immutable; but the Thing decreed may be mutable; and if it were not changed according to the first purpose, it would argue the Decree it self to be changed; For whiles a Man wills that this may be done now, and another thing done afterwards; the same Will remains, and though there be a change in the Effects, there is no change in the Will.

5. The Immutability of Gods Will doth not infringe the Liberty of it. The Liberty of Gods Will consists with the necessity of continuing his Purpose. God is necessarily good, immutably good; yet he is freely so, and would not be otherwise than what he is. God was free in his first Purpose; and purposing this or that by an infallible and unerring Wisdom, it would be a weakness to change the Purpose: But indeed the Liberty of Gods Will doth not seem so much to consist in an indifferency to this or that, as in an independency on any thing without himself: His Will was free, because it did not depend upon the Objects about which his Will was conversant. To be immutably good, is no point of Imperfection, but the height of Perfection.