of things in the ideas of his own mind, and the events of things in
the decrees of his own will; he knows them not by viewing the things,
but by viewing himself; his own essence is the mirror and book,
wherein he beholds all things that he doth ordain, dispose and execute;
and so he knows all things in their first and original cause; which is
no other than his own essence willing, and his own essence executing
what he wills; he knows them in his power, as the physical principle;
in his will, as the moral principle of things, as some speak. He
borrows not the knowledge of creatures from the creatures, nor depends
upon them for means of understanding, as we poor worms do, who are
beholden to the objects abroad to assist us with images of things,
and to our senses to convey them into our minds; God would then
acquire a perfection from those things which are below himself, and an
excellency from those things which are vile; his knowledge would not
precede the being of the creatures, but the creatures would be before
the act of his knowledge. If he understood by images drawn from the
creatures, as we do, there would be something in God which is not God,
viz. the images of things drawn from outward objects: God would then
depend upon creatures for that which is more noble than a bare being;
for to be understanding, is more excellent than barely to be. Besides,
if God’s knowledge of his creatures were derived from the creatures
by the impression of anything upon him, as there is upon us, he could
not know from eternity, because from eternity there was no actual
existence of anything but himself; and therefore there could not be
any images shot out from anything, because there was not anything in
being but God; as there is no principle of being to anything but by
his essence, so there is no principle of the knowledge of anything by
himself but his essence; if the knowledge of God were distinct from
his essence, his knowledge were not eternal, because there is nothing
eternal but his essence. His understanding is not a faculty in him as
it is in us, but the same with his essence, because of the simplicity
of his nature; God is not made up of various parts, one distinct from
another, as we are, and therefore doth not understand by a part of
himself, but by himself; so that to be, and to understand, is the
same with God; his essence is not one thing, and the power whereby he
understands another; he would then be compounded, and not be {a453}
the most simple being. This is also necessary for the perfection of
God; for the more perfect and noble the way and manner of knowing
is, the more perfect and noble is the knowledge. The perfection
of knowledge depends upon the excellency of the medium whereby we
know. As a knowledge by reason, is a more noble way of knowing than
knowledge by sense; so it is more excellent for God to know by his
essence, than by anything without him, anything mixed with him; the
first would render him dependent, and the other would demolish his
simplicity. Again, the natures of all things are contained in God,
not formally; for then the nature of the creatures would be God;
but eminently, “He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that
formed the eye, shall he not see?” (Ps. xciv. 9.) He hath in himself
eminently the beauty, perfection, life and vigor of all creatures;
he created nothing contrary to himself, but everything with some
footsteps of himself in them; he could not have pronounced them
good, as he did, had there been anything in them contrary to his own
goodness; and therefore as his essence primarily represents itself,
so it represents the creatures, and makes them known to him. As
the essence of God is eminently all things, so by understanding his
essence, he eminently understands all things.[724] And therefore
he hath not one knowledge of himself, and another knowledge of the
creatures; but by knowing himself as the original and exemplary cause
of all things, he cannot be ignorant of any creature which he is the
cause of; so that he knows all things, not by an understanding of them,
but by an understanding of himself; by understanding his own power as
the efficient of them, his own will as the orderer of them, his own
goodness as the adorner and beautifier of them, his own wisdom as the
disposer of them, and his own holiness, to which many of their actions
are contrary. As he sees all things possible in his own power, because
he is able to produce them; so he sees all things future in his own
will, decreeing to effect them, if they be good, or decreeing to
permit them if they be evil.[725] In this class he sees what he will
give being to, and what he will suffer to fall into a deficiency,
without looking out of himself, or borrowing knowledge from his
creatures; he knows all things in himself. And thus his knowledge is
more noble, and of a higher elevation than ours, or the knowledge of
any creature can be; he knows all things by one comprehension of the
causes in himself.
_Prop. II._ God knows all things by one act of intuition. This the
schools call an intuitive knowledge. This follows upon the other; for
if he know by his own essence, he knows all things by one act, there
would be otherwise a division in his essence, a first and a last, a
nearness and a distance. As what he made, he made by one word; so what
he sees, he pierceth into by one glance from eternity to eternity: as
he wills all things by one act of his will, so he knows all things by
one act of his understanding: he knows not some things discursively
from other things, nor knows one thing successively after another. As
by one act he imparts essence to things; so by one act he knows the
nature of things.
1. He doth not know by discourse, as we do;――that is, by deducing
{a454} one thing from another, and from common notions drawing out
other rational conclusions and arguing one thing from another, and
springing up various consequences from some principle assented to.
But God stands in no need of reasonings; the making inferences and
abstracting things, would be stains in the infinite perfection of God;
here would be a mixture of knowledge and ignorance; while he knew
the principle, he would not know the consequence and conclusion,
till he had actually deduced it; one thing would be known after
another, and so he would have an ignorance, and then a knowledge; and
there would be different conceptions in God, and knowledge would be
multiplied according to the multitude of objects; as it is in human
understandings. But God knows all things before they did exist, and
never was ignorant of them (Acts xv. 18): “Known unto God are all his
works from the beginning of the world.” He therefore knows them all at
once; the knowledge of one thing was not before another, nor depended
upon another, as it doth in the way of human reasoning.[726] Though,
indeed, some make a virtual discourse in God; that is, though God
hath a simple knowledge, yet it doth virtually contain a discourse by
the flowing of one knowledge from another; as from the knowledge of
his own power, he knows what things are possible to be made by him;
and from the knowledge of himself, he passes to the knowledge of the
creatures; but this is only according to our conception, and because
of our weakness they are apprehended as two distinct acts in God, one
of which is the reason of another; as we say that one attribute is
the reason of another; as his mercy may be said to be the reason of
his patience; and his omnipresence to be the reason of the knowledge
of present things done in the world. God, indeed, by one simple act,
knows himself and the creatures; but when that act whereby he knows
himself, is conceived by us to pass to the knowledge of the creatures,
we must not understand it to be a new act, distinct from the other;
but the same act upon different terms or objects; such an order is in
our understandings and conceptions, not in God’s.
2. Nor doth he know successively as we do: that is, not by drops,
one thing after another. This follows from the former; a knowledge of
all things without discourse, is a knowledge without succession.[727]
The knowledge of one thing is not in God before another, one act of
knowledge doth not beget another; in regard of the objects, one thing
is before another, one year before another, one generation of men
before another, one is the cause, the other is the effect; in the
creatures there is such a succession, and God knows there will be such
a succession; but there is no such order in God’s knowledge, for he
knows all those successions by one glance, without any succession of
knowledge in himself. Man, in his view of things, must turn sometimes
his body, sometimes only his eyes, he cannot see all the contents
of a letter at once; and though he beholds all the lines in the page
of a book at once, and a whole country in a map, yet to know what is
contained in them, he must turn his eye from word to word, and line to
line, and so spin out one thing after another by {a455} several acts
and motions. We behold a great part of the sea at once,[728] but not
all the dimensions of it; for to know the length of the sea, we move
our eyes one way; to see the breadth of it, we turn our eyes another
way; to behold the depth of it, we have another motion of them. And
when we cast our eyes up to heaven, we seem to receive in an instant,
the whole extent of the hemisphere; yet there is but one object the
eye can attentively pitch upon, and we cannot distinctly view what
we see in a lump, without various motions of our eyes, which is not
done without succession of time.[729] And certainly the understanding
of angels is bounded, according to the measure of their beings; so
that it cannot extend itself at one time, to a quantity of objects,
to make a distinct application of them, but the objects must present
themselves one by one; but God is all eye, all understanding; as there
is no succession in his essence, so there is none in his knowledge;
his understanding in the nature and in the act, is infinite, as it
is in the text. He therefore sees, eternally and universally, all
things by one act, without any motion, much less various motions; the
various changes of things, in their substance, qualities, places, and
relations, withdraw not anything from his eye, nor bring any new thing
to his knowledge; he doth not upon consideration of present things
turn his mind from past; or when he beholds future things turn his
mind from present; but he sees them not one after another, but all
at once and all together; the whole circle of his own counsels, and
all the various lines drawn forth from the centre of his will, to
the circumference of his creatures; just as if a man were able in
one moment to read a whole library; or, as if you should imagine
a transparent crystal globe, hung up in the midst of a room, and
so framed as to take in the images of all things in the room, the
fret‑work in the ceiling, the inlaid parts of the floor and the
particular parts of the tapestry about it, the eye of a man would
behold all the beauty of the room at once in it. As the sun by one
light and heat frames sensible things, so God by one simple act knows
all things; as he knows mutable things by an immutable knowledge,
bodily things by a spiritual knowledge, so he knows many things by one
knowledge (Heb. iv. 13): “All things are open and naked to him,” more
than any one thing can be to us; and therefore he views all things
at once, as well as we can behold and contemplate one thing alone.
As he is the Father of lights, a God of infinite understanding, there
is no variableness in his mind, nor any shadow of turning of his
eye, as there is of ours, to behold various things (James i. 17); his
knowledge being eternal, includes all times; there is nothing past or
future with him, and therefore he beholds all things by one and the
same manner of knowledge, and comprehends all knowable things by one
act, and in one moment. This must needs be so,
(1.) Because of the eminency of God. God is above all, and therefore
cannot but see the motions of all. He that sits in a theatre, or at
the top of a place, sees all things, all persons; by one aspect he
comprehends the whole circle of the place; whereas, he that sits below,
when he looks before, he cannot see things behind; God {a456} being
above all, about all, in all, sees at once the motions of all. The
whole world, in the eye of God, is less than a point that divides one
sentence from another in a book; as a cypher, a “grain of dust” (Isa.
xl. 15); so little a thing can be seen by man at once; and all things
being as little in the eye of God, are seen at once by him. As all
time is but a moment to his eternity, so all things are but as a point
to the immensity of his knowledge, which he can behold with more ease
than we can move or turn our eye.
(2.) Because all the perfections of knowing are united in God.[730] As
particular senses are divided in man,――by one he sees, by another he
smells, yet all those are united in one common sense, and this common
sense comprehends all,――so the various and distinct ways of knowledge
in the creatures are all eminently united in God. A man when he
sees a grain of wheat, understands at once all things that can in
time proceed from that seed; so God, by beholding his own virtue and
power, beholds all things which shall in time be unfolded by him.
We have a shadow of this way of knowledge in our own understanding;
the sense only perceives a thing present, and one object only proper
and suitable to it; as the eye sees color, the ear hears sounds; we
see this and that man, one time this, another minute that; but the
understanding abstracts a notion of the common nature of man, and
frames a conception of that nature wherein all men agree; and so in
a manner beholds and understands all men at once, by understanding the
common nature of man, which is a degree of knowledge above the sense
and fancy; we may then conceive an infinite vaster perfection in the
understanding of God. As to know, is simply better than not to know at
all; so to know by one act comprehensive, is a greater perfection than
to know by divided acts, by succession to receive information, and to
have an increase or decrease of knowledge; to be like a bucket, always
descending into the well, and fetching water from thence. It is a
man’s weakness that he is fixed on one object only at a time; it is
God’s perfection that he can behold all at once, and is fixed upon one
no more than upon another.
_Prop. III._ God knows all things independently. This is essential to
an infinite understanding. He receives not his knowledge from anything
without him; he hath no tutor to instruct him, or book to inform him:
“Who hath been his counsellor?” saith the prophet (Isa. xl. 13); he
hath no need of the counsels of others, nor of the instructions of
others. This follows upon the first and second propositions; if he
knows things by his essence, then, as his essence is independent from
the creatures, so is his knowledge; he borrows not any images from the
creature; hath no species or pictures of things in his understanding,
as we have; no beams from the creature strike upon him to enlighten
him, but beams from him upon the world; the earth sends not light
to the sun, but the sun to the earth. Our knowledge, indeed, depends
upon the object, but all created objects depend upon God’s knowledge
and will; we could not know creatures unless they were; but creatures
could not be unless God knew them. As nothing that he wills is the
cause of his will, so {a457} nothing that he knows is the cause of his
knowledge; he did not make things to know them, but he knows them to
make them: who will imagine that the mark of the foot in the dust is
the cause that the foot stands in this or that particular place? If
his knowledge did depend upon the things, then the existence of things
did precede God’s knowledge of them: to say that they are the cause of
God’s knowledge, is to say that God was not the cause of their being;
and if he did create them, it was effected by a blind and ignorant
power; he created he knew not what, till he had produced it. If
he be beholden for his knowledge to the creatures he hath made, he
had then no knowledge of them before he made them. If his knowledge
were dependent upon them, it could not be eternal, but must have a
beginning when the creatures had a beginning, and be of no longer
a date than since the nature of things was in actual existence; for
whatsoever is a cause of knowledge, doth precede the knowledge it
causes, either in order of time, or order of nature: temporal things,
therefore, cannot be the cause of that knowledge which is eternal. His
works could not be foreknown to him, if his knowledge commenced with
the existence of his works (Acts xv. 18): if he knew them before he
made them, he could not derive a knowledge from them after they were
made. He made all things in wisdom (Ps. civ. 24). How can this be
imagined, if the things known where the cause of his knowledge, and
so before his knowledge, and therefore before his action?[731] God
would not then be the first in the order of knowing agents, because
he would not act by knowledge, but act before he knew, and know
after he had acted; and so the creature which he made would be before
the act of his understanding, whereby he knew what he made. Again,
since knowledge is a perfection, if God’s knowledge of the creatures
depended upon the creatures, he would derive an excellency from them,
they would derive no excellency from any idea in the Divine mind;
he would not be infinitely perfect in himself; if his perfection in
knowledge were gained from anything without himself and below himself,
he would not be sufficient of himself, but be under an indigence,
which wanted a supply from the things he had made, and could not
be eternally perfect till he had created and seen the effects of
his own power, goodness, and wisdom, to render him more wise and
knowing in time than he was from eternity. Who can fancy such a God
as this without destroying the Deity he pretends to adore? for if his
understanding be perfected by something without him, why may not his
essence be perfected by something without him; that, as he was made
knowing by something without him, he might be made God by something
without him? How could his understanding be infinite if it depended
upon a finite object, as upon a cause? Is the majesty of God to be
debased to a mendicant condition, to seek for a supply from things
inferior to himself? Is it to be imagined that a fool, a toad, a fly,
should be assistant to the knowledge of God? that the most noble being
should be perfected by things so vile; that the Supreme Cause of all
things should receive any addition of knowledge, and be determined in
his understanding, by the notion {a458} of things so mean? To conclude
this particular, all things depend upon his knowledge, his knowledge
depends upon nothing, but is as independent as himself and his own
essence.
_Prop. IV._ God knows all things distinctly. His understanding is
infinite in regard of clearness; “God is light, and in him is no
darkness at all” (John i. 5); he sees not through a mist or cloud;
there is no blemish in his understanding, no mote or beam in his
eye, to render any thing obscure to him. Man discerns the surface and
outside side of things; little or nothing of the essence of things;
we see the noblest thing but “as in a glass darkly” (1 Cor. xiii. 12);
the too great nearness, as well as the too great distance of a thing,
hinders our sight; the smallness of a mote escapes our eye, and so our
knowledge; also the weakness of our understanding is troubled with the
multitude of things, and cannot know many things but confusedly: but
God knows the forms and essence of things, every circumstance; nothing
is so deep, but he sees to the bottom; he sees the mass, and sees the
motes of beings; his understanding being infinite, is not offended
with a multitude of things, or distracted with the variety of them;
he discerns every thing infinitely more clearly and perfectly than
Adam or Solomon could any one thing in the circle of their knowledge;
what knowledge they had, was from him; he hath, therefore, infinitely
a more perfect knowledge than they were capable in their natures to
receive a communication of. All things are open to him (Heb. iv. 13);
the least fibre, in its nakedness and distinct frame, is transparent
to him, as, by the help of glasses, the mouth, feet, hands, of a small
insect, are visible to a man, which seem to the eye, without that
assistance, one entire piece, not diversified into parts. All the
causes, qualities, natures, properties of things, are open to him; “he
brings out the host of heaven by number, and calleth them by names”
(Isa. xl. 26); he numbers the hairs of our heads: what more distinct
than number? Thus God beholds things in every unity, which makes up
the heap; he knows, and none else can, every thing in its true and
intimate causes, in its original and intermediate causes; in himself,
as the cause of every particular of their being, every property in
their being. Knowledge by the causes is the most noble and perfect
knowledge, and most suited to the infinite excellency of the Divine
Being; he created all things, and ordered them to a universal and
particular end; he, therefore, knows the essential properties of
every thing, every activity of their nature, all their fitness for
those distinct ends, to which he orders them, and for which he
governs and disposeth them, and understands their darkest and most
hidden qualities infinitely clearer than any eye can behold the clear
beams of the sun. He knows all things as he made them; he made them
distinctly, and therefore knows them distinctly, and that every
individual; therefore God is said (Gen. i. 31) to see every thing that
he had made; he took a review of every particular creature he had made,
and upon his view pronounced it good. To pronounce that good, which
was not exactly known in every creek, in every mite of its nature,
had not consisted with his veracity; for every one that speaks truth
ignorantly, that knows not that he speaks truth, is a liar in speaking
{a459} that which is true. God knows every act of his own will,
whether it be positive or permissive, and therefore every effect of
his will. We must needs ascribe to God a perfect knowledge; but a
confused knowledge cannot challenge that title. To know things only in
a heap is unworthy of the Divine perfection; for if God knows his own
ends in the creation of things, he knows distinctly the means whereby
he will bring them to those ends for which he hath appointed them: no
wise man intends an end, without a knowledge of the means conducing to
that end; an ignorance, then, of any thing in the world, which falls
under the nature of a means to a Divine end (and there is nothing in
the world but doth), would be inconsistent with the perfection of God;
it would ascribe to him a blind providence in the world. As there can
be nothing imperfect in his being and essence, so there can be nothing
imperfect in his understanding and knowledge, and therefore not a
confused knowledge, which is an imperfection. “Darkness and light
are both alike to him” (Ps. cxxxix. 12); he sees distinctly into the
one, as well as the other; what is darkness to us, is not so to him.