Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

4. Reason. Because of his Immutability.

If God did not fill all the spaces of Heaven and Earth, but only possess one, yet it must be acknowledged that God hath a Power to move himself to another: It were absurd to fix God in a part of the Heavens, like a Star in an Orb, without a power of motion to another place. If he be therefore Essentially in Heaven, may he not be upon the Earth if he please, and transfer his Substance from one place to another? to say he cannot, is to deny him a Perfection which he hath bestowed upon his Creatures; the Angels his Messengers are sometimes in Heaven, sometimes on the Earth; the Eagles, meaner Creatures, are sometimes in the Air out of Sight, sometimes upon the Earth. If he doth move therefore and recede from one place, and settle in another, doth he not declare himself mutable by changing places? by being where he was not before, and in not being where he was before? He would not fill Heaven and Earth at once, but successively; no man can be said to fill a Room, that moves from one part of a Room to another; if therefore any in their imaginations, stake God to the Heavens, they render him less than his Creatures; If they allow him a power of motion from one place to another, they conceive him changeable; and in either of them they own him no greater than a finite and limited Being; limited to Heaven, if they fix him there; limited to that space to which they imagine him to move.

If God did not fill all the spaces of Heaven and Earth, but only possess one, yet it must be acknowledg'd that God hath a Power to move himself to another: It were absurd to fix God in a part of the Heavens, like a Star in an Orb, without a power of motion to another place. If he be therefore Essentially in Heaven, may he not be upon the Earth if he please, and transfer his Substance from one place to another? to say he cannot, is to deny him a Perfection which he hath bestow'd upon his Creatures; the Angels his Messengers are sometimes in Heaven, sometimes on the Earth; the Eagles, meaner Creatures, are sometimes in the Air out of Sight, sometimes upon the Earth. If he doth move therefore and recede from one place, and settle in another, doth he not declare himself mutable by changing places? by being where he was not before, and in not being where he was before? He would not fill Heaven and Earth at once, but successively; no man can be said to fill a Room, that moves frome one part of a Room to another; if therefore any in their imaginations, stake God to the Heavens, they render him less than his Creatures; If they allow him a power of motion from one place to another, they conceive him changeable; and in either of them they own him no greater than a finite and limited Being; limited to Heaven, if they fix him there; limited to that space to which they imagine him to move.