Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

That which had no beginning of duration can never have an end, or any interruptions in it. Since God never depended upon any, what should make him cease to be what eternally he hath been, or put a stop to the continuance of his perfections? He cannot will his own destruction, that is against universal nature in all things to cease from being, if they can preserve themselves. He cannot desert his own Being, because he cannot but love himself as the best and chiefest good. The reason that any thing decays, is either its own native weakness, or a superior Power of something contrary to it:^* There is no weakness in the nature of God that can introduce any Corruption, because he is infinitely simple without any mixture; Nor can he be overpowered by any thing else; a weaker cannot hurt him, and a stronger than he there cannot be; Nor can he be outwitted or circumvented, because of his infinite Wisdom: As he received his Being from none, so he cannot be deprived of it by any; As he doth necessarily exist, so he doth necessarily always exist: This indeed is the Property of God; nothing so proper to him, as always to be. Whatsoever perfections any Being hath, if it be not eternal, it is not divine. God only is immortal;^* he only is so by a necessity of nature: Angels, Souls and Bodies too, after the Resurrection shall be immortal; not by nature but grant; they are subject to return to nothing, if that word that raised them from nothing should speak them into nothing again: 'Tis as easy with God to strip them of it, as to invest them with it; nay, it is impossible but that they should perish, if God should withdraw his Power from preserving them, which he exerted in creating them: But God is immovably fixed in his own Being; that as none gave him his Life, so none can deprive him of his Life, or the least particle of it; not a jot of the happiness and life, which God infinitely possesses, can be lost: It will be as durable to everlasting, as it hath been possessed from everlasting.

That which had no beginning of duration can never have an end, or any interruptions in it. Since God never depended upon any, what should make him cease to be what eternally he hath been, or put a stop to the continuance of his perfections? He cannot will his own destruction, that is against universal nature in all things to cease from being, if they can preserve themselves. He cannot desert his own Being, because he cannot but love himself as the best and chiefest good. The reason that any thing decays, is either its own native weakness, or a superior Power of something contrary to it: