Deity as similar to a human mind and understanding. What is the soul of
man? A composition of various faculties, passions, sentiments, ideas;
united, indeed, into one self or person, but still distinct from each
other. When it reasons, the ideas, which are the parts of its discourse,
arrange themselves in a certain form or order; which is not preserved
entire for a moment, but immediately gives place to another arrangement.
New opinions, new passions, new affections, new feelings arise, which
continually diversify the mental scene, and produce in it the greatest
variety and most rapid succession imaginable. How is this compatible with
that perfect immutability and simplicity which all true Theists ascribe
to the Deity? By the same act, say they, he sees past, present, and
future: His love and hatred, his mercy and justice, are one individual
operation: He is entire in every point of space; and complete in every
instant of duration. No succession, no change, no acquisition, no
diminution. What he is implies not in it any shadow of distinction or
diversity. And what he is this moment he ever has been, and ever will be,
without any new judgement, sentiment, or operation. He stands fixed in
one simple, perfect state: nor can you ever say, with any propriety, that
this act of his is different from that other; or that this judgement or
idea has been lately formed, and will give place, by succession, to any
different judgement or idea.

I can readily allow, said CLEANTHES, that those who maintain the perfect
simplicity of the Supreme Being, to the extent in which you have
explained it, are complete Mystics, and chargeable with all the
consequences which I have drawn from their opinion. They are, in a word,
Atheists, without knowing it. For though it be allowed, that the Deity
possesses attributes of which we have no comprehension, yet ought we
never to ascribe to him any attributes which are absolutely incompatible
with that intelligent nature essential to him. A mind, whose acts and