Note 2 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
Most readers who have given any attention to speculations of this kind, will recollect Newton's remarkable expressions concerning the Deity: "Æternus est et infinitus, omnipotens et omnisciens; id est, durat ab æterno in æternum, et adest ab infinito in infinitum.... Non est æternitas et infinitas, sed æternus et infinitus; non est duratio et spatium, sed durat et adest. Durat semper et adest ubique, et existendo semper et ubique durationem et spatium constituit."
To say that God by existing always and everywhere constitutes duration and space, appears to be a form of expression better avoided. Besides that it approaches too near to the opinion, which the writer rejects, that He is duration and space, it assumes a knowledge of the nature of the Divine existence, beyond our means of knowing, and therefore rashly. It appears to be safer, and more in conformity with what we really know, to say, not that the existence of God constitutes time and space; but that God has constituted man, so that he can apprehend the works of creation, only as existing in time and space. That God has constituted time and space as conditions of man's knowledge of the creation, is certain: that God has constituted time and space as results of his own existence in any other way, we cannot know.