He never changes; his purposes of the future embrace eternity: all things that are really future are certain, because his purposes cannot fail of accomplishment. But all future things to us are contingent, except as he has revealed their certainty. That the future is known to him, also appears by the accomplishment of every prophecy.
But man’s sin receives hereby no apology. He gives the brutal creation the capacity of deriving pleasure from gratification of sense, and provides for such appetites. He offers to man, pleasures which are intellectual: he has tendered him the means, and requires man to seek his spiritual happiness in God. When he refuses and withholds his return of service from God, man is alone to blame. And the more numerous and powerful the motives which he resists, the guilt is the greater. The divine foreknowledge of this is no excuse for man. When the Lord overpowers man’s evil with good, the glory of man’s salvation belongs to God.
[56]. See Ray’s Wisdom of God in the Works of Creation, and Derham’s Physico-Theology. See also Fenelon, Newenlyle, Paley, and Adams’s Philosophy.
[58]. See Quest. clvi. and clvii.
[59]. Quest. xvi. xvii. xxi. and xxx.
[60]. The Quest. xliv. and lxxi.
[61]. Quest. xxix. and lxxix.
[62]. All the good which we behold in Creation, Providence, and redemption, flows from goodness in God, and are the proofs of this attribute. If all the evil, which we discover, springs from the liberty given to creatures to conform, or not, to the revealed will; or if all moral evil be productive of good, the remainder being restrained; then the evil, which exists, is no exception to the proofs of Divine goodness. What Deity now is, he always was; he has not derived his goodness; he is not a compounded being; his goodness therefore belongs to his essence. His goodness has been distinguished into immanent and communicative. The latter discovers to us the former, but his communicative goodness, though flowing in ten thousand streams, and incalculable, is less than his immanent, which is an eternal fountain of excellency.
Infinite knowledge discerns things as they are, and a perfect being will esteem that to be best, which is so; God therefore discerns, and esteems his own immanent goodness as infinitely exceeding all the good, which appears in his works, for the excellency in these is but an imperfect representation of himself. The happiness of Deity must consist consequently in his own self-complacency; he made all things for his pleasure, or glory, but they are only so far pleasing, as they reflect his own picture to himself. Yet when we suppose Deity to be the subject of motives, we are ever in danger of erring.