Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

3. Therefore repentance in God is only a change of his outward conduct, according to his infallible foresight and immutable Will. He changes the way of his Providential proceeding according to the carriage of the Creature, without changing his Will, which is the Rule of his Providence; when God speaks of his repenting that he had made man; ^*tis only his changing his conduct from a way of kindness to a way of severity, and is a word suited to our capacities to signify his detestation of sin and his resolution to punish it, after man had made himself quite another thing, than God had made him; It repents me, that is, I am purposed to destroy the world; as he that repents of his work throws it away:^* As if a Potter cast away the vessel he had framed, it were a testimony, that he repented that ever he took pains about it: So the destruction of them seems to be a repentance in God that ever he made them; tis a change of events, not of Counsels. Repentance in us is a grief for a former fact, and a changing of our course in it: Grief is not in God,^* but his repentance is a willing a thing should not be as it was, which Will was fixed from Eternity; for God foreseeing Man would fall, and decreeing to permit it, he could not be said to repent in time of what he did not repent from Eternity; and therefore if there were no repentance in God from Eternity, there could be none in time. But God is said to repent, when he changes the disposition of affairs without himself; as men when they repent, alter the course of their actions, so God alters things extra see or without himself, but changes nothing of his own purpose within himself. It rather notes the action he is about to do, than any thing in his own nature, or any change in his eternal purpose. Gods repenting of his kindness is nothing but an inflicting of punishment, which the Creature by the change of his carriage hath merited: As his repenting of the evil threatened is the withholding the punishment ⟨p. 226⟩denounced, when the Creature hath humbly submitted to his Authority and acknowledged his crime.

3. Therefore repentance in God is only a change of his outward conduct, according to his infallible foresight and immutable Will. He changes the way of his Providential proceeding according to the carriage of the Creature, without changing his Will, which is the Rule of his Providence; when God speaks of his repenting that he had made man;