* Now to seek for reasons to prove that God is not an arbitrary being, that is, a being of the highest freedom and independency, that does every thing according to his own will and pleasure, is as vain, as to seek for reasons to prove, that all things are not the effect of his will. For if every thing besides God, received its existence from him; if every thing that exists, is the effect of his will, and he can do nothing, but because he wills the doing it, must he not be free and arbitrary in as high a manner, as he is powerful?
This writer says, It is not in our power to love the deity, whilst we consider him to be an arbitrary being, acting out of humour and caprice.[¹]
[¹] Page 31.
But if God’s will is as essentially opposite to humour and caprice, as his omnipotence is to weakness and inability; then it is as absurd to suppose, that God must act according to humour and caprice, because he acts according to his own will, as to suppose that he must act with inability, because he acts by his omnipotence.
And if the will of God, as such, is in the highest state of perfection, then we have the highest reason to love and adore God, because he is arbitrary, and acts according to his own all-perfect will. And if it be asked, what it is that makes the will of God all-perfect, it may as well be asked, what it is that makes him omnipotent, or makes him to exist. For, as we have not found out a God, till we have found a being that has no cause; so we have not found the will of God, till we have found a will, that has no mover, or director, or cause of its perfection. For that will which never began to be, can no more be any thing, but what it is in itself, than it can begin to be.
That which makes people imagine, that will alone is not so adorable, is because they consider it as a blind imperfect faculty that wants to be directed. But what has such a will as this to do with the will of God?
For if the will of God is as perfect a will, as his omniscience is a perfect knowledge, then we are as sure, that the will of God cannot want any direction, or will any thing amiss, as we are, that his omniscience cannot need any information, or fall into any mistake. And if the will of God wanted any direction or government, it is impossible it should have it; for having no superior, it could only be so governed, because it willed it, and therefore must be always under its own government.
All the perfection therefore that can be ascribed to God, must be ascribed to his will, not as if it was the production of his will, (for nothing in God is produced) but as eternally inherent in it.
And as God’s will has thus all the perfection of the divine nature, and has no rule, or reason, or motive to any goodness, that comes from it, but its own nature and state in God: so this great will is the only law of all creatures, and they are all to obey and conform to it, for this reason, because it is the will of God.
* Nothing has a moral reason, or fitness to be done, but because it is the will of God that it should be done.