Eternity considered
Time we may comprehend […] but to retire so farre backe as to apprehend a beginning, to give such an infinite start forward, as to conceive an end in an essence that wee affirme hath neither the one nor the other; […] God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him, ‘tis the priviledge of his owne nature; I am that I am, was his owne definition unto Moses, and ‘twas a short one, to confound mortalitie, that durst question God, or aske him what hee was; indeed, he only is, all others have and shall be, but in eternity there is no distinction of Tenses; and therefore that terrible terme Predestination, which hath troubled so many weake heads to conceive, and the wisest to explaine, is in respect to God no prescious* determination of our estates to come, but a definitive blast of his will already fulfilled, and at the instant that he first decreed it; for to his eternitie which is indivisible, and altogether, the last Trumpe is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed in Abrahams bosome.
Thomas Browne. Religio Medici (“On the Faith of a Doctor”), c.1643.
* Meaning ‘foreknowledge’ (de pre- & -sciare, ‘to know’)
