[Editor's Note: The sermons from which this selection is excerpted were first published in Wi by Samuel's brother John in 1738. They expand and clarify many of Clarke's views about God's metaphysical and moral attributes.]

Sermon iv: Of the Eternity of God [Wi, 22]

… It is worthy of observation, as to the manner of our conceiving the eternity of God, that the Scholastic writers have generally described it to be not a real perpetual duration but one point or instant comprehending eternity, and wherein all things are really coexistent at once. But unintelligible ways of speaking have, I think, never done any service to religion. The true notion of the divine eternity does not consist in making past things to be still present and things future to be already come, which is an express contradiction.