Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

2. There is no change in God by the act of Creation, because there was no new Power in God. Had God had a Will at the time of the Creation which he had not before, there had been a moral change in him; so had there been in him a Power only to create then and not before, there had been a physical change in him from weakness to ability. There can be no more new Power in God, than there can be a new Will in God; for his Will is his Power, and what he willeth to effect, that he doth effect: As he was unchangeably Holy, so he was unchangeably Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come^*; which was Almighty, and is Almighty, and ever will be Almighty. The Work therefore makes no change in God, but there is a change in the thing wrought by that Power of God. Suppose you had a Seal engraven upon some Metal a Hundred years old, or as old as the Creation; and you should this day, so many Ages after the engraving of it, make an impression of that Seal upon Wax; would you say the Engravement upon the Seal were changed, because it produced that stamp upon the Wax now, which it did not before? No, the change is purely in the Wax, which receives a new figure or form by the impression; not in the Seal, that was capable of imprinting the same long before. God was the same from Eternity as he was when he made a Signature of himself upon the Creatures by Creation, and is no more changed by stamping them into several forms, than the Seal is changed by making impression upon the Wax: As when a house is enlightened by the Sun, or that which was cold is heated by it; there is a change in the house from darkness to light, from coldness to heat; but is there any change in the light and heat of the Sun? There is a change in the thing enlightened or warmed by that light and heat which remains fixed and constant in the Sun, which was as capable in it self to produce the same effects before, as at that instant when it works them: So when God is the Author of a new Work, he is not changed; because he works it by an eternal Will and an eternal Power.

2. There is no change in God by the act of Creation, because there was no new Power in God. Had God had a Will at the time of the Creation which he had not before, there had been a moral change in him; so had there been in him a Power only to create then and not before, there had been a physical change in him from weakness to ability. There can be no more new Power in God, than there can be a new Will in God; for his Will is his Power, and what he willeth to effect, that he doth effect: As he was unchangeably Holy, so he was unchangeably Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come