It is Man, not God that changeth. [ 472]
THe Sun hath but one simple act of shining;* 1.1 yet do we not see that it doth unite clay and straw, dissolve Ice and water? it hardens clay, and melteth wax; it makes the flowers to smell sweetly, and a dead Corps to scent loathsomly; the hot fire to be colder, and the cold water hotter; cures one man with its heat, yet there∣with kills another; What's the reason? the cause is in the severall objects, and their divers dispositions, and constitutions, and not in the Suns act of shining, which is one and the same thing; or tell a Looking-glass be set in the Window; Will it not represent to the eye diversity of objects? If thou go to it in decent and seemly appa∣rel, shalt thou not see the like figure? if dejected, and in coorse Rayment, will it not offer to thy view the same equal proportion? Do but stretch thy self, bend thy brow, and run against it, will it not resemble the like person and actions? Where now is the change? shall we conclude in the glass? No; for it is neither altered from the place,* 1.2 nor in the nature: Thus the change of love and affection is not in God, but in respect of the object about which it is exercised; if one day God seem to love us, another day to hate us, there is alteration within us first, not any in the Lord; we shall be sure to find a change, but it must be when we do change our wayes, but God never changeth; such as we are to our selves, such will he be to us; if we run stubbornly against him,* 1.3 he will walk stubbornly against us, vvith the froward he will be froward, but with the meek he will shew himselfe meekly: yet one and the same God still, in vvhom there is not the least shadow of change imaginable.