Christs eternal existence, and the dignity of his person asserted and proved in opposition…

1. Because preservation is but a kind of continued creation, or a continuance of the being which God hath caused: Gods will in creation maketh a thing to be, his will in preservation maketh it continue to be: the same omnipotency and efficacy of God is necessary to sustain our beings, as at first to create them. Therefore it is said Psal. 104.2. Thou stretchest out the Heavens like a curtain, which noteth a continued act, God erected them at first and still sustaineth them by his secret power in this posture: so that with respect to God it is the same action to conserve as to create. That the creature may have a being the influence of God is necessary to produce it, ⟨p. 95⟩that the creature may continue its being, it is necessary that God should not break off that influence, or forsake the creature so made: for the being of the creature doth so wholly depend on the will of God, that it cannot subsist without him. Nothing can be without the will of God, which is the cause both of the being and existence of all creatures: Therefore their being cannot be continued unless God will: therefore it belongeth to the same power to make any thing out of nothing, and to keep any thing that is made from returning to its first nothing.

2. It is impossible to cut off the dependence of the creature upon the first cause, for no creature hath a self sufficiency to maintain and support it self. Things of Art may subsist without the Artificer, as a Carpenter maketh a House and then leaveth it to stand of it self; the Shipwright maketh a Ship, and then leaveth it to the Pilot to guide it: but all things of Nature depend upon God that made them, because they have their whole being from him, matter, and form: which be continueth no longer then he pleaseth, whether they be things in Earth, or things in Heaven, visible or invisible. No impression of the Agent remaineth in the effect when his action ceaseth; when the effect wholly dependeth ⟨p. 96⟩