Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

As the Will of God for Creating the world, was no new, but an Eternal Will, tho it manifested it self in time; so the Will of God for the punishment of sin, or the reconciliation of the sinner, was no new Will: Tho his wrath in time break out in the effects of it upon sinners, and his love flows out in the effects of it upon penitents. Christ by his death reconciling God to man, did not alter the Will of God, but did what was consonant to his Eternal Will: He came not to change his Will, but to execute his Will. Lo I come to do thy Will, oh God. ^*And the grace of God in Christ, was not a new grace, but an old grace in a new appearance; the grace of God hath appeared.^*

1. *Heb. 10.7.
2. *Tit. 1.11.

6. Proposition, A change of Laws by God argues no change in God, when God abrogates some Laws which he had settled in the Church and enacts others. I spake of this something the last day: I shall only add this. God commanded one thing to the Jews, when the Church was in an infant state; and removed those Laws, when the Church came to some growth. The Elements of the world were suited to the state of Children. ^*A Mother feeds not the Infant with the same diet as she doth, when it is grown up. Our Saviour acquainted not his Disciples with some things at one time which he did at another, because they were not able to bear them; Where was the change, in Christs Will, or in their growth from a state of weakness to that of strength? A Physician prescribes not the same thing to a person in health, as he doth to one conflicting with a distemper; nor the same thing in the beginning, as he doth in the state or declination of the disease. The Physicians Will and Skill are the same, but the capacity and necessity of the Patient for this or that Medicine or method of proceeding, are not the same.