d
repent; hath he said, and shall he not do it? Numb. xxiii. 19. And shall
he decree, and not execute it? Shall he purpose, and not perform it? "I am
the Lord, I change not," that is his name, Mal. iii. 6. "The counsel of
the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations,"
Psal. xxxiii. 11. Men change their mind oftener than their garments. Poor
vain man, even in his best estate, is changeableness, and vicissitude
itself, altogether vanity! And this ariseth partly from the imperfection
of his understanding, and his ignorance because he does not understand
what may fall out. There are many things secret and hidden, which if he
discovered, he would not be of that judgment, and many things may fall out
which may give ground of another resolution and partly from the weakness
and perverseness of his will, that cannot he constant in any good thing
and is not so closely united to it as that no fear or terror can separate
from it. But there is no such imperfection in him, neither ignorance nor
weakness. "All things are naked before him," all their natures, their
circumstances, all events, all emergencies, known to him are they, and
"all his works from the beginning, as perfectly as in the end." And
therefore he may come to a fixed resolution from all eternity and being
resolved he can see no reason of change because there can nothing appear
after, which he did not perfectly discover from the beginning. Therefore,
whenever ye read in the Scripture of the Lord's repenting--as Gen. vi. 7,
Jer. xviii. 8.--ye should remember that the Lord speaks in our terms, and
like nurses with their children uses our own dialect, to point out to us
our great ignorance of his majesty, that cannot conceive more honourably
of him nor more distinctly of ourselves. When he changeth all things about
him, he is not changed, for all these changes were at once in his mind,
but when he changeth his outward dispensations he is said to repent of
what he is doing, because we use not to change our manner of dealing,
without some conceived grief, or repentance and change of mind. When a man
goes to build a house, he hath no mind but that it should continue so. He
hath not the least thought of taking it down again, but afterwards it
becomes ruinous, and his estate enlarges, and then he takes a new
resolution, to cast it down to the ground and build a better. Thus it is
with man, according as he varies his work, he changes his mind. But it is