fection excludes successive thoughts in God; and therefore that[1] the Essence of God is one perfect thought, in which he views and wills all things. And though his transient acts such as creation, providence, and miracles, are done in a succession of time; yet his immanent acts, his knowledge and decrees, are one with his essence. And as he grants this to be a true notion of God so he allows that a vast difficulty arises from it against the liberty of God. For, says he, the immanent acts of God being suppos'd free, it is not easy to imagine how they should be one with the divine essence; to which, necessary existence does most certainly belong. And if the immanent acts of God are necessary, then the transient must be so likewise, as being the certain effects of his immanent acts: and a chain of necessary fate must run through the whole order of things: and God himself then is no free being, but acts by a necessity of nature. And this necessity, to which God is thus subject, is, adds he, no absurdity to some. God is, according to them, necessarily just, true, and good, by an intrinsick necessity that arises from his own infinite perfection. And from hence they have thought that since God acts by in-
- ↑ Expos. p. 26, 27.
