Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
Thirdly, [God is] without passions too; that is, not subject to, nor capable of love, hatred, joy, grief, anger, and the like, as they daily arise in us imperfect creatures; but he is always the same unmovable, unchangeable, impassible God: and therefore in all our contemplations of the Divine essence, we are not to conceive him as one passionately rejoicing or grieving for any thing, as we do, but as a pure and perfect essence, without body, parts, and passions too; as appears from scripture, reason, and fathers.
… we must conclude him to be without passions too, as well as parts; for if he be such a pure essence, yea, essence itself, it is impossible he should be subject to any passions. But this, that he is without passions, appears more clearly from these words, God is not a man, that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent, Num. xxiii. 19. But most clearly of all in that Paul and Barnabas, to convince the people at Lystra that they were not Gods, but men, tell them, they were men of like passions, or subject to passions, as well as they, Acts xiv. 14. And St. James useth the same argument to prove that Elias was a man too, James v. 17. Now had God been subject to passions, as well as men, the apostles would have been much overseen in their logics, using an argument that would make as much against them as for them. …
And lastly, if God should be moved, or changed, and by consequence be in passion any way, it must be either from something without him, or from something within him: from any thing without him, it cannot be; for he is the First Cause, and so the first mover, by whom all other things are moved, and therefore who cannot be moved by any thing: from within he cannot be moved, for he hath not any parts, (as I have shewn,) whereof one can be the thing moving, and the other the thing moved, being in and of himself a most pure and simple act. And therefore we cannot but conclude from reason also, that God is without body, parts, and passions. ...
For more, see William Beveridge on God without passions.
… we must conclude him to be without passions too, as well as parts; for if he be such a pure essence, yea, essence itself, it is impossible he should be subject to any passions. But this, that he is without passions, appears more clearly from these words, God is not a man, that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent, Num. xxiii. 19. But most clearly of all in that Paul and Barnabas, to convince the people at Lystra that they were not Gods, but men, tell them, they were men of like passions, or subject to passions, as well as they, Acts xiv. 14. And St. James useth the same argument to prove that Elias was a man too, James v. 17. Now had God been subject to passions, as well as men, the apostles would have been much overseen in their logics, using an argument that would make as much against them as for them. …
And lastly, if God should be moved, or changed, and by consequence be in passion any way, it must be either from something without him, or from something within him: from any thing without him, it cannot be; for he is the First Cause, and so the first mover, by whom all other things are moved, and therefore who cannot be moved by any thing: from within he cannot be moved, for he hath not any parts, (as I have shewn,) whereof one can be the thing moving, and the other the thing moved, being in and of himself a most pure and simple act. And therefore we cannot but conclude from reason also, that God is without body, parts, and passions. ...
For more, see William Beveridge on God without passions.
