Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

1. Because every Creature rose from nothing. As they rose from nothing, so they tend to nothing, unless they are preserved by God: The Notion of a Creature speaks changeableness; because to be a Creature, is to be made something of nothing, and therefore Creation is a change of nothing into something: The Being of a Creature begins from change, and therefore the Essence of a Creature is subject to change: God only is uncreated, and therefore unchangeable: If he were made, he could not be immutable; for the very making is a change of not Being into Being. All Creatures were made good as they were the fruits of Gods Goodness and Power; but must needs be mutable, because they were the extracts of nothing.

2. Because every Creature depends purely upon the Will of God. They depend not upon themselves, but upon another for their Being: As they received their Being from the Word of his Mouth and the Arm of his Power, so by the same Word they ⟨p. 222⟩can be cancelled into nothing, and return into as little significancy as when they were nothing: He that created them by a Word, can by a Word destroy them, Psalm 104.29. If God should take away their Breath, they dye and return into their Dust. As it was in the power of the Creator that things might be, before they actually were; so it is in the power of the Creator that things after they are, may cease to be what they are; and they are in their own Nature as reducible to nothing, as they were producible by the power of God from nothing; for there needs no more than an Act of Gods Will to null them, as there needed only an Act of Gods Will to make them. Creatures are all subject to a higher Cause: They are all reputed as nothing: He doth according to his Will in the Armies of Heaven, and among the Inhabitants of the Earth, and none can stay his Hand, or say unto him what dost thou? ^*But God is unchangeable, because he is the highest Good; none above him, all below him; all dependent on him, himself upon none.